Volume 37 - Issue 5

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Sign's of the Time

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Street signs mark the intersection if the city}- past and present.

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by Sarah Laskow •

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24 A Delicate Art Yalf conservators work to Sa'J!e what time will eventuai!J take.

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by Emily I<opley

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Sonic Youth Troubled teens sound iff on what m atters most.·

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by Casey Miner

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Points of Departure The Critical Angle: Broken Vision l?J Lane Rick Essay: M y Woman's Center l?J Elizabeth St. V ictor Endnote: The Don't-buy-it Diet l?J M ina Kimes

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THE NEW JOL'RNAL is published five rimes during the aademic year by THE iE\V JOL'RNAL at Yale, Inc., P.O. Box 3432 Yale tation, ew Ha>en, CT 06520. Office address: 305 Crown Sueet. Phone: 203.432.0520.

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. • . · all: The · First Settler (fFS) has fmger- Egypt" exhibit now steals the spotlight. nails as smooth as soapstone, hair as A faded square on the black stone ., . shiny as videotape and a hairline crack ground marks his former home. running through his left knee. revealing "There ·was just some burlap behind his flesh to be paper white. him when we moved him," Mrs. "Ever · g disintegrates with time, DaRos explains, "Nothing like the even a plaster cast," Maureen DaRos, environment he's in now." the Peabody's anthropological museum In 1983, to honor the soth anniverassistant, says wistfully. "Well, maybe sary of the Archaeological Society of not the rocks."

Connecticut which links the findings Posed in imitation of a flint carver, of amateur archaeologists with those The First Settler grips a large stone as of archaeological scholars Peabody . .:·>·'. . .. one might grip a saltshaker. In front of curators rearranged hundreds of . . .. . . .. .. his immaculate loindoth; resting on a . ., objects which had been displayed in ' Nativity Scene field of blue-gray paint is a dusting of random order into a dirnly-lit "educa- · flint shards. By his right knee, TFS has tional" exhibit. The exhibit chronologarranged his finished arrowheads as ically traces each historical period with RECENTLY, A THIRD-GRADER. TOURING the Yale Peabody Museum pointed at a young boys might arrange their base- puny pen-and-ink sketches depicting glass case and asked .a question about ball cards. the use of each tool. The purpose of More than any other case in the the exhibit, like the purpose of archaethe third floor's largely-ignored 1983 exhibit, "Habitants of Southern New museum, the glass of The First Settler ology, is to understand how people England." He did not ask about the is oily with fingerprints. While it seems lived. The First Settler is a "living" most popular item (the arrowheads), somewhat normal to display stuffed example of this educational mission; a the flashiest (the beaded deerskin jack- grizzly bears and pinned beetles, there's man arranged with the tools of his et), or even the most gruesome (a color something about a man trapped in a time, posed as his creators imagine he photo of an Indian burial ground, pep- cube of glass that draws handprints. might have once posed. "Sometitnes pered with skeletons).

Security guards pacing around get used people think, 'Oh, the exhibit's so bor"Is that a stuffed man?" he asked, to him, but on their first few shifts they ing,"' DaRos says, scanning the arrowpointing to the glass cube, inside of might mistake him for a fatigued heads and soapstone bowls, "But then which a man with skin as weathered as tourist who has plopped down to rest. they turn around and the ·d iorama is the Marlboro cowboy's sat absolutely But he's not just resting; The First right over there." still, his jet-black hair obscuring eyes in Settler is a Sisyphus working for eterniThe exhibit is visited by third-graders, a perpetual stare. It was a logical ques- ty. In the online catalog, he's known collectors who wish to compare the tion: The boy had just wandered simply as "YPM 13931" or "Showcase history of an arrowhead they've dug up through the museum's third floor, past Cast of Indian." His locality is listed as to one displayed and Native American the "Birds of Connecticut" exhibit "unknown," and no current curator·- tribes. The tribes corne to exa.tnine the where lime green cases showcase not even the 91 year-old archaeologist remains in the museum's collection stuffed Dodos and hundreds of other who last worked the job has any idea after they are notified in accordance with the Native American Grave taxidermied hunting prizes. In front of where he came from. hitn sat another animal behind another As long as anyone can remember, Protection and Reappropriation Act, sheet of glass above another sn1a1J The First Settler, like his namesake, has which gives them the right to claitn placard with another declaration of a always been around. A darkened con- what is theirs. Just this past March, a . " . . . the fir st se ttlers. " spectes: tact sheet of old insurance photos Sioux descendant and archaeological If the third-grader had looked closer, shows hirn in his previous position, scholar accused the Peabody of stealhe might not have asked the question at where the "Daily Life in Ancient ing from the tribe in the 1870s. Based 4 THE NEW JOURNAL - ·-:

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on his research, the museum returned the fossils taken from Sioux landthey always give back to "recognized tribes," but there are "fakers." So far, no one has claimed The First Setder.

In 1911, a San Francisco museum made a plaster cast of the last living member of a tribe, and even kept his brain in a jar for posterity. While it's more likely The First Settler was a cast of a regular artist's model, it remains unclear where he catne frorn. If you ignore the hairline crack and pretend he's really the man the exhibit says he is,. you'll learn from an informational placard that "Native Americans arrived · in what is now Connecticut around 10,900 B.C., by which time the last ice sheet- had retreated northward from . the state." Though they would have liked to have gone further south, "The first settlers ... were prevented from proceeding south by the ftnal ice sheet, which extended across Canada."

Twelve thousand and five years later there's another ice sheet: a plate of glass between a plaster man and the curious hands that slide across the pane.

-Adriane Quinlan

French Revolution IN HIGH SCHOOL I COULDN'T HAVE THE

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French stud I dreamed of, but at least I was geuing some action French in Action, a famed language program created by Yale Professor Pierre Capretz ain1ed at exposing students to French. language and culture. Students are introduced to Robert, a bumbling American, and Mireille, a chic French art-history student to follow their vaguely romantic adventures through France courtesy _of workbooks, audio tapes and a whopping 26 hours of video. The program is based on the courses Capretz has been teaching at Yale since 19 56--courses that pioneered a new system of language

April2005

instruction. "I came to the .United States in 1949 with the intent to spread French language and culture," he says.

"I was appalled at the way languages in general were taught." More specifically, Capretz noted that French was taught without regard to French culture. "Culture is language, language is

mated that eight mi1Iion people had viewed French in Action in the United States alone. · Now, 18 years after its video component was fihned, French in Action has a decidedly vintage quality. "Since it was shot in '87, there are a number of things that are outdated," C_a pretz says, •

TOM TOMOAAOW

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Courtesy of Pierre Capretz .

culture," he says. "So I tried to develop material with the real spoken language, and represent the real culture."

The success of French in Action has caused it to spread beyond Yale classrooms. In 1987, Capretz, in conjunction with Annenberg/The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, consolidated his audio material and collection of over three thousand slides and embarked on a grueling three-month ftlm shoot in Paris. The result . was French in Action a program that has been used extensively in secondary schools and universities around the United States even in rural Alaban1a schools such as mine, a testament to the program's. pervasive success.

But, Capretz's audience has not been 1irnited to formal students; thanks to its backing by Annen berg/ CPB, French in Action has aired on numerous public broadcast stations around the country and has been picked up by satellite in Australia and Brazil. Roger Ebert ranked it alongside the works of Shakespeare as one of the five things he would desire if he were marooned on a desert island; and according to Capretz, Annenberg/ CPB once esti-

specifically citing the cultural aspects of the video that are now obsolete.

Euros have replaced the francs with which Robert and Mireille purchased aperitifs at La Closerie des Li/as, and all of the characters are noticeably bereft of cell phones "Everyone in France has a portable!" Capretz exclaims. In my high school French class, however, we were more amused by the characters' eighties get-ups: Robert strolls through Paris donning a white sports coat over his jeans and a baby-blue Yale tee-shirt, and rnany of Mireille's friends sport w.hat can only be called the French equivalent of mall-hair.

Capretz knows that it is titne for French in Action to receive a major face-lift, and he is poised to unveil a new and improved version for the digital age: French in Interaction.

Although filming has not begun, Capretz imagines a plot for French in Interaction that will teach students about modern French culture while still using footage from French in Action.

Tragically, Robert and Mireille have not ended up together perhaps I read too much into her invitation midway through French in Action, for 5

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Robert to address her with the casual t11, rather than the formal voru. "The beginning will take place on Yale campus with the two original characters, Robert and Mireille," Capretz says.

"They will be walking across Beinecke Plaza, when their paths cross and they recognize each other-they each now have a child at Yale. Then, they'll repair to some place, maybe Naples Pizza, and recall everything that happened twenty years ago." Thus, each episode of French in Interaction will begin with a new two-minute segment that updates the flashback from French in Action that follows.

In addition to the updated video segments, French in Interaction will include-voila!-a number of computer-aided interactive exercises.

French in Action includes audio tapes that instructed students to repeat phrases uttered by both Capretz and the characters from the videos.

"Now," says Capretz, "as [the student] answers, the response is recorded on the computer. Then it automatically plays back what the character said and what the student said." This allows students to compare their own responses to the originals.

Students will also be able to watch the video portion of the program on the computer, with captions if they wish, which will allow them to form a stronger association between the spoken and written word.

On a practical level, French in Interaction will update Capretz's wildly successful teaching methods. And on a romantic one, perhaps it will flnally allow Robert and Mireille to realize their suppressed passion for one another. After all, at the end of French in Action, he rescued her from a burning building. The two belong together.

-Helen Eckinger

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A Perfect Fit? SHORT PANT LEGS DRIVE UYEN

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crazy. Ideally, pants should graze the ground, so as not to reveal too much shoe, she says. While Le's preference might seem perfectly ridiculous, as the president of YCouture she has always has her own sense of what's haute and what's not. "My philosophy is very simple, my fashion is for purely artistic reasons ... " Le explains, "Simplification is my thing."

To see her vision realized, Le created YCouture, an organization for student clothing designers. The group, which focuses on collaborative efforts between designers and the promotion of individual collections, extends beyond Le's vision of fashion as art: It proves fashion means business. It encourages a free exchange of ideas amongst its designers, producers and models, and lets Yalies use the language of textile, stitches, cut and color to communicate. YCouture's¡ mission is two-fold (or pleated). It caters to the Yale population by cultivating a fashion-conscious environment on campus and to the extended New Haven community by engaging in service projects.

But the seams of the organization are not as clean as Le would have hoped. She and the rest of the board have struggled to determine precisely how the group should operate. Since its debut on January 23, 2005, YCouture's biggest jaunt was staging the finale for the inaugural Winter Arts Festival. This initial attempt to rally the Yale community around fashion proved highly successful and highly lucrative. The group sold more than one hundred tickets, and all of the show's proceeds went to tsunami relief. This charitable donation demonstrated YCouture's position as a multi-faceted organization~qually dedicated to community service and

fashion awareness. However, since the organization supports multiple designers-all of whom assign individual meaning to their work-Le emphasizes the challenge YCouture has faced in choosing one message that serves to positively represent the group without disregarding the personalities that comprise it. Because YCouture acts as an umbrella organization for Yale's fashion community, it needs to split its effort between coordinating group shows--like the one which closed the Winter Arts Festival-and assisting individual design collections. When YCouture came into fruition late last year, many designers interested in the group already had their own show ideas underway. But, the priority of YCouture's debut collection meant that many personal projects were put on hold. This caused such a reaction among the group's members that for the remainder of the year, the organization will only support individual collections and not attempt any large projects.

Even though YCouture is less than a year old, the group is already looking to revamp its repertoire. There are two possible futures for YCouture: to produce and design shows which feature the collections of many designers or assist separate projects. Aiming for both could confuse the organization's image and result in overextended resources. Le wants to prevent YCouture from mimicking fashion's cut-throat nature. Even within the Yale bubble, she worries that attitudes more suited to Madison Avenue¡than to Elm Street might emerge: "I'm afraid selfinterest might take and it will fall apart."

In what is already an aggressive academic environment, Le has no desire to

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foster more competition within Yale's sessions. In terms of conununity campus. Warning:· A\l YCoutute service, Le hopes that YCouture Will designers . come equipped with scis- continue to contribute to important sors and needles. But Orly Friedman, causes. She has also proposed a prothe vice-president of production, gram in which YCouture members takes a different view: "I think it real- would help battered women living in ly works better if everyone has their shelters improve their presentation own project, and uses the group as for job interviews. support." Le acknowledges the diffiIn the meantime, YCouture will culty in coordinating group projects. continue to struggle to find its fit.

Sometimes the bias each designer has But this will become even more diffifor his or her own collection is more cult after Le steps down from her severe than the cut of the dresses presidential post at the year's end. coursing down the runway. Plus, Finding an appropriate' replacement designers are .r eluctant to let other should be one of the organization's individuals intervene with their work top priorities.

According to Fougtler, • in any capacity, fearing that their groups "sink or swim based on how vision· n11ght be compromised. "It's they pick the next year's leadership." very hard for you as an artist to let YCouture is no exception. Le's predsomeone else take care of the art- ecessor must be willing to introduce work," Le continues. new incentives to lure more Yalies Jon Fougner, the into the fashion rea1rn. It is a job that student-producer for requires the threading together of YCouture, suggests two business, couture and a vivid itnaginaways for members to tion and proves, like Le believes, avoid competition. ."Creativity goes a very long way .... " First, the group must Hopefully next year's fashionable offer "incentive struc- pants will avoid design disaster. After tures" to prevent inter- all, fashion should be simple. nal contests.

The -EmifyKoh • conunuruty . servtce projects· and special Learning Curve events - that YCouture plans to LIKE MUCH OF THE FACULTY AT THE orgaruze next year Cooperative Arts and Hntnanities will hopefully diffuse High School on Orange 'Street, such competition. A Kristina Holbrook believes that what Project Runway-esque distinguishes Co-op from other pub-:event tops the list of lic schools is its open-tnindedness. potential activities. It "It's very rare that a child is bullied. will be open to anyone Some students have green hair with interested, regardless of purple streaks; others are n•ale ballet previous fashion expert- dancers. Everybodyls accepted." But ise. YCouture will select a Jennifer, a senior who's planning the specific material such as foil or a prom, disagrees with this utopian trash bag that all participants must characterization. Kids at Co-op, she then transform into a fashionable says, "have a lot of beef on the low." item. Le envisions famous designers She notices my puzzled expression and Yale aluruni judging the and exp1ains, "Beef on the low is when you pretend to like son1ebody, final products.

Additional projects would likely but you really don't like them at all" But apart from the typical high include a lecture series and designing

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April2005

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school intrigue, Co-op has ·a reputation for providing a safer and more open enVironment than other schools in New Haven. K.eith Cunningham, the school's arts director, believes this is a result of the school's programs in creative writing, dance, theater and visual arts. A magnet school for the arts, Coop requires its students to spend two · hours each day collaborating on projects like plays and dance shows. The result is a greater degree of trust in and out of _the classroom. This, coupled with the fact that the school is half the size of larger New Haven schools like Wilbur Cross, means that social divisions rarely prompt actual fights. For this reason, Co-op can draw applicants from farnilies living in New Haven as well as its affluent suburbs.

Holbrook's classroom offers a . . glimpse of this comfortable environment. Rosalie, a freshman drama student dressed in a Sesame Street tank top and purple Converse sneakers jokes with her friend Hanna, "We've decided that when we grow up, we want to become dictators." "Benevolent dictators, of course," says Holbrook. "Don't worry," Rosalie replies, turning to me and the teacher, "We like you. We won't enslave you."

Despite the atmosphere suggested by this easy banter, it is a tense titne for Co-op. For two years in a row the school has failed to meet the standards of "Adequate Yearly Progress" (AYP) established under the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. The school is currently in the middle of testing its sophomores for CAPT, the Connecticut Academic Performance Test, which runs from March 28 to April 15. In every classroom, tenth-graders hunch over tests whose scores will determine whether Co-op will be listed as a failing school for the third year in a row.

To meet this year's statewide AYP standards, 59 percent of Co-op's sophomores will have to show proficiency in math; 62 percent will have to do so in reading. In previous years, Co-op's

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scores have been well below the state . . average but noticeably higher than in districts with comparable socio-economic demographics. Last year, in an effort to promote its academic achievement Co-op appointed a new. principal, Dolores Garcia-Blocker. She has introduced a strict set of rules meant to restore order at the risk of suspension: no more walking around without hall .passes, no jackets in school, no leaving school for lunch. Teachers have to inte. grate reading, writing, math and science sk.ilis tested by CAPT into their general curriculum, a measure that was initially met with some resistance. Says Cunningham, "We had to convince teachers that this isn't just another thing they have to make room for." Implicidy, it is matter of having a job to come back to next year.

Both Cunningham and-Holbrook feel that the changes required by No Child Left Behind have helped Co-op "adopt higher standards" academically. But, Cunningham adds, Co-op had been raising its own standards well before the school was designated sub-standard.

The statistics agree: In the 1997-1998 and the 2001-2002 school years, the .

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percentage of students who performed "above goal" in math on the CAFrr' · rose from four percent to 20.7 percent.

The increase is only four percent less for reading and writing.

Soon, though, No Child Left Behind may cripple the very arts programs that first encouraged Co-op's exceptional environment. NCLB requires that by the next school year, all Connecticut public school teachers be "highly qualified." To meet these standards, teachers must hold a bachelors' degree and "demonstrate a high level of competency" in their subject. Schools must notify parents of any teachers that fail to meet these standards. The measure would put Co-op under pressure to replace a large number of its art · instructors, many of whom are professional artists who only teach part-ritne.

In the dance program, two of the three ' instructors are uncertified. One of them, Tina Kershaw, has been teaching in the public school system for 23 years.

Because she began training professionally right out of high school, to continue working at Co-op, says Cunningham, . she "would have to stop eve g to get a college degree" even before she

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could become certified. Kershaw worries, "When I complete that, will I have a job, or will they all be taken?"

This is not the first time that Co-op has been lambasted by broader school reforms. Years ago, Co-op was permitted ·to select its students based on child and parent interviews, auditions and an essay. "We weren't looking for high skill · levels necessarily, but whether or not they wanted to do art. Maybe they didn't have the G>pportunities, but they wanted to do it," says Cunningham.

Then in 1994, as a Connecticut Department of Education pamphlet mandates, in an effort to "prevent the • racial, ethnic or economic isolation" of inne~ciiy schools, the state required that all magnet schools choose their students by lottery.

The reformed system may have helped bring more students from outside the city into Co-op, but it has .also taken away the school's ability to handpick kids who are self-motivated and passionate about art. Kershaw says the best class she can remember was the last one to be interviewed and auditioned. The school would like to insti. tute a multi-tiered system for adnritting students that would combine auditions and interviews with a lottery, but with existing state regulations, there is little room for such flexibility.

Though well-intentioned, broad reforms at the federal and state level often stifle the interests of specialized schools like Co-op. Ironically, as sacrifices are made to keep Co-op's CAPT scores climbing, its art program the very thing that makes it unique is threatened. If the tighter restrictions on teacher cer1 ification pass, the programs will be hit with yet another more devastating blow. According to Jack Gillette, the director of Yale's Teacher Preparation Progratn, schools must "multi-task many stakeholders' interests at the same time." He describes school reform with a reference to the Old Testatnent. "At the policy level it's the Jeremiah problem. Everybody's shout-

April2005

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ing at the same time."

Recendy, Connecticut announced its plan to sue the government because of No Child Left Behind. It is the first state to do so. The result of this attempt may significandy aid Co-op.

The school has been bombarded by demands from federal, state and neighborhood constituencies. In the upcoming months, the controversy will be amplified. But will Co-op be able to listen to everybody around it and still hear itself?

- .I1!J Wang

Into the Woods 'THE STORY OF 'IH E YAI E

FOREST BEGINS

indoors. Once inhabited by paleontologist and explorer Othniel C. Marsh, Marsh Hall is a charming old house which now accommodates the Yale Institute of Sustainable Forestry.

"Institute," however, seerns a sterile word to describe this comfortable niche in academia untainted by titne or the upheavals of politics. Upon entering, I can't suppress the feeling that I've stepped into soniebody's home. The wooden spiral staircase squeaks amiably at every step. I atn here to see Mark Ashton, professor of Silviculture and director of the Yale school forests. In his office, a friendly clutter prevails: A mobile adorned with dried seed-pods hangs above the table, various rolls of paper are stuffed in containers with handwritten labels like "storage for

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maps in tubes," and an aquarium quietly grows algae. I meet with Ashton and two doctoral students Samantha Rothman, the Extension and Outreach coordinator, and Alexander Evans, the coordinator of Mapping and Inventory.

Sam and Zander, both appropriately dressed in sage green and brown, cheerfully introduce themselves and begin telling me about the 10,880 acres of forest owned by Yale a plot of land .. that rnost undergraduates don't even know exists.

• There are a total of eight tracts of land in the Yale School Forest system.

The land is not endowed and therefore must be self-sustaining, paying for itself through timber production. "You have to rnanage it sustainably," Sam says, "because-this is for the long haul." The largest tract and coincidentally, the largest physical possession of Yale University the Yale-Myers Forest is also the closest to campus, spanning the towns of Ashford, Eastford, Union and Woodstock, Connecticut. Myers' distance from big cities and its considerable size tnake it a bona fide forest, a rare phenomenon in the dense urban landscape of the East Coast. In fact, it sits in an area called the "Last Green Valley," a surprisingly large chunk of Connecticut left undeveloped due to what Zander describes as "historical accident."

Urbanization is a considerable obstacle to the study of forestry on the East Coast. The Princeton School Forest, Sarn explains, is more like an urban 9

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closed to the public.

"We have a lot of • • expenments out m the woods," Zander explains, "So we can't have a lot of people • trampmg every which way."

But there are ways for the public to experience the forest.

A long trail that crosses some of the most beautiful parts of the Myers Forest is popular among the hiking community and a destination of some Yale FOOT trips. Students can conduct research as faculty assistants or take silviculture classes, which traditionally involves spending a few ·nights there in the spring. The institute also hosts events such as the Christtnas Tree Cut, during which anyone can join the Society of American Foresters members in harvesting pine trees and transporl ing them back to the Marsh Hall lawn, where they are sold each year.

Another annual conununity event is the "Bio-Blitz" an ali-day and night wilderness excursion in which participants attempt to count how many different species they can identify in 24 hours. Usually people give up at nightfall, but Zander lights up when he remembers, "We have a bat person this year!"

As for School of Forestry students, they embark on a week-long forest adventure at the be · · g of their masters' study, a rite of passage that every hopeful forester must brave.

During this rirne they trarnp around in the woods, sleep in tiny bunks, get eaten alive by mosquitoes and experi•

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park than a forest, due to its close proximity to campus. Constant use disturbs the forests' utility as an environment for controlled scientific study.

While the Yale-Myers Forest largely escapes the problematic side-effects of urbanization, Tourney Forest, another of the eight which hugs the city of Keene, New Hampshire, is not so lucky. Visitors frequently leave trash behind, which the institute must send teams to clean up.

"That's the unfortunate aspect," exp1ains Ashton. "We find things · like couches stuffed with tofu." "literally," darifies Zander after a pause.

Myers operates with three goals in tnind: research, education and management. The land serves as a handson laboratory where students and professors can conduct controlled projects in order to study forest managetnent techniques. Most of the land i~

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ence hands-on what forestry is all about. Forestry is dirty, trying and character building.

The thing that strikes me most about the three foresters is their apparent obsession with the forest. Sam gushes about her summers spent doing field work there, showing me a photograph of the sutnrner crew engaged in an intense game of wiffle-ball. When I ask how much rirne they usually spend in the forest, Zander replies that he is there at least one day a week during the year and two to three days a week during the surmner. Mark just built a house there.

Sam smns it up for me: "When I went to Yale-Myers I knew this is where I wanted to be."

As Zander declares, "It's a labor of love."

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-Erica Deahl

Unlikely Plot I PASS UNDER 'IH E G.A:IE OF THE GROVE Street Cemetery and separate from the crowd of students quickly passing by. The epigraph on the portal"The Dead Shall Be Raised" may be a source of comfort to those who come here, but the words retnind me that a cemetery serves as a final destination, an ending, not a fertile ground on which to build a life.

Knocking on the frosted glass door of the cemetery's brownstone office, I wonder what it must be like for William Cameron, the cemetery superintendent, to walk through these gates on a daily basis.When he opens the door, Cameron's disposition inunediately confirms my assumption that he must be thickskinned: He brusquely • offers me a wooden chair just beside the door, situated at least five feet away from where he sits behind his desk, and asks me coldly what I want.

"What don't I do," he scoffs, describing his profession. "It would take me

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tells me as he slouches back in ·h is a week, two weeks to tell you."

Cameron ft.rst came to Grove Street chair, fingers interlaced over his • in order to "work outdoors." trtm torso.

However, a graveyard seems an Cameron's "team" includes his four unlikely destination for someone children and two grandchildren. simply seeking fresh air, and his While most people consider death an clipped answers don't sufficiently unexpected tragedy, the experience of explain why he has stayed for thirty working in a cemetery has caused years. But Cameron's surroundings . Cameron's family to deal with death's suggest that he is more suited for logistical details with overly rational cadavers than cubicles. His office is precision. Growing up in an environthe only sign of life it brims with ment consistently plagued by loss has large plants and the continued yelps an effect on the children, who, he of three small dogs. There are no fil- tells me, are now more "willing to accept the reality of death." ing cabinets to be found.

But the pets and plants in I find myself squeamish and fidgCameron's office provide only the ety when we talk about cremations, smallest ._ indication of his unusual burialso, and tombstones. Death is r profession. Just feet away from not something everyone can stomCameron hovers his wife, Joan ach; it is an acquired taste. Most peoCameron, who works as the ceme- ple, according to Cameron, try to tery's assistant superintendent. The ignore the inevitability of death, and Camerons have been married for fami1ies are often left unprepared more than fifty years and have when death does in fact occur. worked together for his entire tenure "There can be a lot of confusion for as superintendent. "We're a team," he the family," he says with the authori'

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ty of a man who has buried more than 7 50 corpses.

For each burial, he becomes an integral part of that family's grieving process. "Everyone grieves in a different way," he tells me, recalling a Russian woman who visited her husband's grave every day for years before Cameron finally buried her alongside hirn. Before she died, the woman often sought Cameron's company. His wife boasts about how good her husband is at his job; and how strongly he affects the bereaved.

"People really cling to Bill for comfort," she muses as she plays with the dog curled in her lap.

Though Cameron insists that "not too many people make an impression," on hirn, he acknowledges that helping people through a difficult tirne is a significant part of his work.

"You get close to people," he admits.

But when his job requires hirn to bury someone he knows, it-becomes a different situation: "It does bother you."

In a sense, Cameron and his wife are earthly angels. "We get along so good with people, I can't believe it," he says. Perhaps Cameron carne to the cemetery to work outdoors, but helping people has become a significant part of why he now lives for the job.

Catneron eventually divulges that he's writing a book about his work. It was his own idea, he explains, and he hasn't thought about selling it yet.

"It's hard to get into," he admits (he can only write for "two, maybe three hours at a tirne") but he already has a title: Life in a Cemetery. As he goes on past the title to recite the opening line, I atn reminded that a cernetery is not just a graveyard. It is a tirne capsule for people and memories. "Yes, there is life in a cemetery," Cameron reads, "and I've lived that life for 25 years."

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n October 20, the two surviving owners of Horowitz Bros., Arthur and Leonard Horowitz, abandoned Chapel Street to its future.

Where an ocean of buttons and waves of fabric once flooded every corner, long-time employees waited out the store's final hour among boxes strewn like driftwood on an empty seabed. In the past few decades as other Chapel Street stores fled the city, Horowitz Bros. stayed on, a community landmark. But now even they were closing shop. One woman walked out of the double doors and onto the street with tears streaming down her face. Her name was Maria Acampora and for thirty years, she had been the Horowitz's bookkeeper.

That day Suzanna Lengyel wandered through the store, taking it all in. An occasional customer throughout the decades, she had shopped h~re only when her husband's suit jackets needed new elbow patches. For the past nine months, however, with uttnost dedication, she had collected a library of documents,some mourning the store's demise, others praising its legacy. She asked a saleslady where she might find the owners and followed the woman's finger to the figure of Art Horowitz. Worried he rnight be gruff and nervous about what she had come to tell him, Suzanna introduced herself Art seemed happy to meet her (a friend of his cousin Phil, she said) and he listened as she told him about what Phil's wife Hilda had begun ca11ing Suzanna's "obsession." Suzanna could not believe that as an older version of ew Haven disappeared behind the fa<_;:ades of luxury apat tments and international chains, the city had made no gesture to recognize the cornmiunent of the Horowitz tradition. B..ut if the bureaucrats at Gty Hall had not remembered the Horowitz brothers, Suzanna's dossier proved that plenty of ew Haven residents did. Now she wanted to channel these collective memories into a physical sign of the city's esteem. Her plan: to renarne the intersection of Chapel and State streets, where the store had stood for • so long, Horowitz Bros.

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orowitz Bros., rooted in New Haven since 1914, had succeeded with the same sales pitch for years, selling quality fabric, various household goods and inexpensive, sturdy clothing the inventory of a classic . . department store. Like the last ivory key on a piano, it aged slowly while the surrounding stores were replaced by plastic law offices, nail salons and Dunkin' Donuts · franchises signs of New Haven's struggle to survive in a post-industrial economy. The city can not preserve businesses like Horowitz's for nostalgia's sake.

Scattered among the newer storefronts, there are vacant ones the remains of failed enterprises signs of a brighter future that never seems to come. Yet New Haven's recent history is not without its successes.

Street signs like the one Suzanna envisions memorialize those who have given New Haven hope. Bishop Tutu Corner, Elsie Cofield Way, Steven J. Papa Corner and other signs prove that an individual can impact a city, even one as obstinate as New Haven.

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he history of these signs begins at the corner of College and Chapel, the city's heart. Here, New Haven thrives.

Yale's faux-Gothic buildings share sidewalks with the brand name stores that feed off the University's economic power. The New Haven Green and the locally famous Claire's CornerCopia bustle with activity. At the corner, a name famous not only in New Haven, but around the world, presides over the downtown landscape Bishop Desmond Tutu.

The Board of Aldermen voted on the name of the corner in 1987.

Although this neighborhood teems with activity today, two decades ago • this stretch of Chapel, like Horowitz's struggling lower Chapel neighborhood today, glumly hoped •

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for a more fortunate future. In · the 1980s, Joel Schiavone, then a recent Yale graduate, began his career as a developer with a vision of an improved Chapel Street. Remaking, remodeling and revitalizing, Schiavone turned the neighborhood into a capitalist haven; he was "lauded as New Haven's savior. · · While Schiavone was scrubbing the dirt off New Haven's face, he neglected to keep his own hands· clean.

In 1987, when the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa garnered world-wide support and the Ut).ited States imposed sanctions on that country, Schiavone flagrantly ignored the world's condemnation •and attended the Young Presidents' •

not his only contributions to leave a mark. The New Haven tycoon inadvertently jump-started a city-wide street-naming trend. f most residents of New Haven do not remember the corner's story, they certainly recognize • tts name . . "Have you heard of Bishop Tutu Corner?" Romy Drucker, a Yale College sophomore, asked the leather-skinned store owner of the Artistic Beauty Salon. He nodded, although his yellowed eyes rema1ned blank. "We want to have something like that for the Horowitz brothers, in order to recognize all the years they were here."

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Organization Convention, a forum for young CEOs in Johannesburg, South Africa. New Haven was not pleased.

"NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED," reads the aldermanic resolution, "that the New Haven Board of Aldermen proclaitns College Street between Chapel and George 'Bishop Tutu Corner' to indicate disappointment with Joel Schiavone and signify praise of Bishop Desmond Tutu."

The Board took a public and permanent action against Schiavonethey narned the street Schiavone had loved and labored over after a symbolic figure of the political movement he spurned.

Schiavone's real estate pursuits were •

"Yeah, sure," says the store owner.

"Mike " he calls across the room, "Sign this for them, okay?" Mike wore a stained white undershirt and a mustache. The somnolence of these two men contrasted strangely with their surroundings. Even Romy's feathery pink scarf, normally the brightest color for block~ paled in comparison with the cloying colors of the salon.

On a wet and drizzly Friday morning in December, Romy and Suzanna petitioned the shops on Chapel Street for support of the Horowitz Bros. street sign. Romy did the ta11cing, while Suzanna added supportive comrnents. The morning had been fa1rly successful, but, after the beauty salon, Romy looked as if she was not

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. entirely sure why, in the middle of exams, she was spending a morning in downtown New Haven talking about street signs.

She and Suzanna had met after an article she published about the closing of Horowitz Bros., "Endstitch," appeared in Volume 37, Number 1 of The New JournaL The closing line of Romy's elegy implored the city not to let the store's legacy slip into oblivion. Suzanna, sensing an ally, immediately contacted Romy. Suzanna's kindness and conviction were refreshing; one meeting in the sterile underground of Machine City turned iq.to weekly pow-wows. The two make an unlikely pair: a librarian with a Hungarian accent and an undergrad with one from Long Island.

Suzanna opened her archive of Left to right: Hzlda Horowit~ S u~nna Lengyel and Bitsie Clark hard at work. newspaper clippings, letters and notes to check off the Artistic of Aldermen. But that was before the voting to erect another slgn for a difBeauty Salon on her list of stores. street sign . craze and the accusations ferent segment of the city's population every few months. During the She had been up this block on of political pandering.

Monday, and many names on the list When the Board named Bishop height of the craze, a mosque peri• • • " • '1 p • ' • .

• . had already been appealed to for sig- Tutu Corner, few people (including tioned for a "Nasi Moharnmed" cornatures. Near the corner, she found Joel Schiavone) took notice. But in ner, a project that was derailed only support from the Vietnarnese owners 1989, after the death of Salvatore when the city realized that the person of Nails Plus, who spoke only a few Consiglio, founder and owner of in question was not a local figure but words of English. At one store, she Sally's Apizza, the Wooster Street the prophet Mohammed. befriended a girl hired to ·brush the comrnunity petitioned to have a corAs signs cropped up in all corners dozens of wigs that lined its walls. ner named after this cultural icon, of the city, tension mounted. Some She hesitated. when she spotted Nu farnous in local legend both for his claitned the Board was weighing Haven, an adult bookstore, but she delicious pies and his rivalry with down every inch of New Haven with pushed herself inside, where a skinny pizza-making father-in-law Frank meaningless monuments. In 2003, man signed the petition with a pen Pepe. New Haven's residents realized The New Haven Register asked readers held in perfectly manicured fingers. ~ that rather than let history disappear, to "sound off' on the question, "Is The diversity of those who were now they could enshrine it in signs bearing the naming of street corners for indithrowing their support towards. the nap1es of their neighborhood viduals overdone?" A related article Horowitz Bros. would s.urpri~e the · heroes. But afte.t; Sal Consiglio's sign argued that aldermen used the signs housewives who once s~opped at the went up at Olive Street and Wooster, to curry favor with their constituenstore. But when Suzanna had said her the Italian societies of the Wooster cies by drawing "laundry lists of piece, altnost everyone signed her conununity, who first encouraged names, some of them arguably quespetition. immigration from Italy to New tionable." Citizens reacted with indigHaven, all wanted their own. The nation: The signs were an honor, not s recently as 2002, there trend spread from Wooster Street an empty political gesture. One would have been no reason into the African-American cornrnuni- woman marched indignantly into the for Romy and Suzanna to ty, where reverends and bishops of mayor's office and demanded that brave the cold in search of support. various churches were honored for even more signs bear the narnes of In the past, street signs needed little selfless dedication to their parishes. locals, arguing that streets named more than a blessing from the Board By 2003, it seemed the Board was after figures like John Davenport no ~

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term lasts two years, the historic·a l husband, Dr. Curtis Cofield III, to memory of this . office lasts much lead its congregation. The family left longer. The e.m ployees understand North Carolina and settled in the why the regulations were put in Elm City. First as a minister's wife, place. They know that rewriting his- then as a teacher, Cofleld began to tory and changing the names of change the community.. She r~n.:: streets can honor one person's con- pageants, youth groups and soup tribution to the city while erasing kitchens out of the church;· in effect, . another's. .she raised half of the city's children.

Her most lasting contribution, lthough she still passes down though, was her AIDS work, which Elsie Cofield Way · everyday educated New Haven's healthy and on her way to AIDS cared for its sick.

• Interfaith, Elsie Cofield no longer When Alvis Brooker, a former stuplays an active role in the organiza- dent of Colfield's, was elected to the tion she founded. While others pro- Board of Aldermen, naming street vide medical support and counseling signs was in vogue, and he rememto New Haven's HIV population, bered his elementary school teacher. twice a day Cofield makes the On May 27, 2001, Cofleld stood outrounds in the building, giving every- side AIDS Interfaith, amid the whisone a hug. When she started AIDS tles and cheers of friends and admirInterfaith 18 years ago, however, her ers. This small alley, 'once named Gill clients needed much more than for a reason its residents could not hugs. She fought to provide them remember, ·became Elsie Cofield with basic services even wheel- Way for a reason they ·could. chairs at a time when many people Unlike most of the Board's street shrunk from the taboo of the signs, Elise Cofleld Way renamed the disease. street in its entirety over the objecCofield became part of New tions of the family of George Gill, .

Haven's history in 1966, when the whom the street had originally comImmanuel Baptist Church asked her memorated. Gill, a stucco plasterer and local businessman, was a relic of a previous century. Just as present communities had resented the Register's assertion that their icons didn't matter, the heirs of a more distant past felt slighted by the Board's disregard for their role in New Haven's history.

Even Cofield is unsure why the Board changed the street name. She . certainly does not lack for recognition for her work. Plaques clutter the walls of her office and spill into the adjoining room, already full of articles, clippings and awards. On her desk, a picture of Cofield beneath her sign is overshadowed by a shot of her standing next to a grinning President Clinton.

Although she passes her sign every The empty Horowitz Bros. store has not yet removed its famous .front. (Photo by Adriane Quinlan) day, "I don't think about it," she said. longer meant anything to the • commun1ty.

Since then, the Board of Aldermen has drawn up an official procedure for the naming of corners, which Albert Lucas, longtime head of the Board of Aldermen office, calls "relatively simple." Gathering signatures of local businesses and residents is the flrst step, after which, with legislative support, the item appears before two committees: Municipal Services ·and City Planning. If it is recommended, the entire Board votes on the ·measure. Once the aldermen unanimously approve, the mayor and the city clerk must sign off. Only then does the order make it to Trafflc and Parking, where, for 7 5 to 100 taxpayer dollars, a new sign is born.

These official regulations, still little more than a few handwritten phrases, sit in a drawer in the Board of Aldermen office, the administrative heart of the city. Here, the offlce's employees human encyclopedias of New Haven history remember the naming of Bishop Tutu corner and every street sign since the more recent craze. While each aldermanic

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ven · with guidelines in place, the controversy ·over public memorials lingers. With New Haven's many honorable citi-:zens both past and present, the Board must somehow decide who deserves to see his or her name, if . . '" not up in lights, at least in municipal green and white.

To Suzanna, there is no question that the Horowitz brothers deserve recognition.

She has been friends • with Hilda Horowitz for years and . found -her husband Phil to be "a wonderfully, exceptionally nice man." When he died a year and a half ago, Suzanna was among the crowd of mourners who listened as the rabbi claimed, "If there were Jewish saints, Phil would have been one of them." It was then, that Suzanna began to wonder how the city could pay the family tribute.

Street sign proposals often begin with an individual simply looking to honor a friend or colleague. Such • grassroots sentiment _g tves street signs their power as symbols, but has also been the most common source of their controversy. Those in power can more easily honor the people they care about .

Without an initial connection to the Board, Suzanna struggled to push her idea forward. At one point, she said, someone whom she had tried to contact seemed hostile to her proposal and had vaguely suggested that the fatnily was making a hefty profit on the sale of the building.

Bitsie Clark, the Alderwon1an for Ward 7 lower Chapel Street was supportive, but as she wrote Romy in December, "There is -a need for a groundswell of people to push for some way to honor the store.

Suzanna Lengyl and I did not seem to have the requisite clout to get the city to pay attention." In this city,

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Bishop Tutu Corner presides over the ci!J streets. (Photo by Sara Schneider)

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even erecting a street stgn requues hefty political clout.

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tephen J. Papa, Sr. has some ideas about how to make politicians notice him. He's been doing. it for years.

One day in October, Papa came . home and found that thieves had broken through the backdoor and taken some of Mrs. Papa's jewelry with them. But they had also disturbed Papa's most treasured sanctuary a room . full of newspapers. ("My name was on the front cover of the Register two days ago," he chortled.) The thieves shuffled through decades worth of newspaper clippings, became frustrated and hit the wall so hard it cracked. Papa doesn't know what they were looking for.

Amid the pile of New Raven's history in headlines: "Papa founds the Dwight Redevelopment .A gency," "Papa wrangles with a teacher's union ready to walk off the · job," "Papa is appointed to the Board of Education of New Haven," to the Welfare Department, then to the housing authority and to the Livable City Initiative. In the photos his face changes with the years, but also with the seasons. Traditionally, he plays Christopher Columbus in the '

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Santa an octogenarian with a scraggly beard, sitting with his cane and bum hip an his easy chair. But Papa is rarely at home. · "My schedule fills up so darn fast,'! he said. "All volunteer, thousands of hours, and when I tell you thousands, I mean many many hours." Most recently, Papa has been spending time talking to patients at St. Raphael's Hospital. In his opinion every corner of the city could benefit from what his grand-

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dance what Suzanna lacked.

"I was here one day and my grandson called me up, 'You have to come down to our store,' he said. When I went outside, the mayor, the congress lady, the president of St. Raphael's were all there. I thought something had happened!"

It had. In the middle of the crowd standing outside his childhood home, on the signpost for the corner of Chapel and Orchard Street, a •

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Columbus Day Parade, George Washington on Presidents Day, and, of course, Santa Claus every Christmas for the past fifty years.

"I am Santa Claus," Papa chuckled.

Come December, children start ringing the doorbell, seeking out Santa in the days before Christmas. Had the thieves found Papa at home tha~ October, they would have still found

mother called "constructive criticism which you should always give, so long as you're right."

After all these years, Papa has learned how to make people listen to hin1 and his criticisms. Papa is the model of a street sign honoree: an individual who believes he can single-handedly change the city. A ruthless self-promoter, he has in abun-

green beacon floated. "Stephen ].

Papa Corner," it read. "I actually cried,'' Papa said, but then he sat back, thoughtfully. "I don't know how they kept it from me. ... I have so many connections!" nlike Papa, a New Haven man about town, for most of her life, Suzanna was not

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involved in city business. But once she started, she was determined to effect change by seeing Horowitz Brothers Corner become a reality.

"Why shouldn't I accomplish it?" she asked. "People are able to make changes. Why shouldn't I be able to make this little change?"

In January, when Romy returned for spring semester, she and Suzanna presented their collection of signatures the "groundswell" they needed to an excited Bitsie Clark. Her hefty political clout paid off. Faster . than they had believed possible, considering the original resistance from City Hall, their measure jumped through the requisite hurdles and committees with Clark's enthusiastic and seasoned hand behind it. On February 21, 2005, more than a year after Phil Horowitz's funeral, Romy and Suzanna sat in the Board chamber itself for a prelinunary approval hearing before the Municipal Services Committee.

Under the hall's sweeping ceilings, they waited as a bustling crowd of tniddle-aged ladies gathered towards the rear of the Aldermanic Chamber.

Suzanna flitted about, cheeks flushed, chatting with friends and strangers who had all come to speak in support of her proposal. Bitsie Clark, raving about the positive feedback from other aldermen, looked impressed by the turn-out. Romy kept a hand on Suzanna's shoulder as they rehearsed her lines, encouraging her to enunciate so the board could hear her touching tribute through her thick Hungarian accent.

Suzanna's wiry husband, a Yale scientist, smiled as he watched. Even Hilda Horowitz had snuck in "incognito," to witness the realization of her friend's obsession.

One woman after another rose to speak on behalf of the Horowitz brothers. A long-titne employee commended the brothers for a strong tradition of women's employ-

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ment, another lauded their kindness to animals, another, nearly in tears, told the committee she had · bought the fabric for her wedding chuppah at the store. Suzanna and Romy spoke last. Visibly moved, Alderwoman Rose Ferraro Santana, the chairperson of the Committee, effusively thanked the well-wishers.

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Horowitz Bros.!" he takes his seat to a roar of applause.

Waiting for silence, President Jorge Perez asks for a vote: "All in favor?"

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month later, Bitsie Clark's proposal is number 12 on the docket. Stuffed among other municipal suppliants, the small Horowitz contingency Romy, Suzanna, Art and Hilda Horowitz and -friends is clumped together, eagerly awaiting their item. Romy whispers to Suzanna, "This is it." A nervous Suzanna hugs her.

Four aldermen besides Clark speak in favor of the measure, and when Carl Goldfield, Ward 29, concludes with, "This shirt, this tie, this belt: all from •

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n April 29 at 5:30 p.m., a small sign will be unveiled, and a crowd of well-wishers including Mayor John D. Stefano • and Congresswoman Rosa DeLaura, will see Horowitz Brothers Corner's inauguration. With a chorus of ayes that night in March, the Board of Aldermen made Suzanna's dream a rea~tj. The sign will be at the head of a long list of names that line Chapel Street: not only Stephen Papa and Elsie Cofield, but Evelyn Schatz, a community activist; Sidney and Libby Glucksman, Holocaust survivors and long-time owners of Sidney's Tailoring; and the Reverend Curtis Cofield III, Elsie's husband.

Chapel Street has a particularly high concentration of signs but signs

can · be found all over New Haven.

They weave a web of names and history around the cars and pedestrians.

No map or comprehensive list of signs exists, and most likely no one knows for sure how many there are.

But for the communities -and individuals that the signs honor, they are badges of New Haven's best faces .. the citizens who believe in the city.

While New Raven's past recedes and new faces change the city, the street signs will stand above our heads, a gentle reminder of the people who ca.re for New Haven, and the people who care about them. This is New Haven's Hall of Fame, and the Horowitz Brothers Co rner sign will mark not just the brothers' place, but Suzanna's. · •

Sarah Laskow, a j unior in.. Davenport College, is a Senior Editor of TN].

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Program Officer, Ford Foundation

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Bet.~ Theobald Richards i<~ an experienced arts admini:.1rator. strategic planner. tbe~ter artist and Native arts advocate. An enrolled member ortbe Cherok:e~ Natio.n of OklabQnul, she is the first Native American to serve as a Program Officer at the

Ford Foundation. She currently works in the Mt:dia. Arts and Culture Unit ai the fuundation and oversees a portfolio on Indigenous Knowledge and Expressive Culture in the United States, Previously. Betsy ""aS Director of Public Programs for the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center in Connecticut, the largest tribal museum and library in the O.S. She oversaw the planning. development and in1plementation ofalf interpretive, educational and lll'ili.-tic programs presented to the public. For the past twelve years she bas also worked as a dramaturg and director. developing scripts by Native American writers and bas su~fully brokered artistic connections between Native artists, mainstream organizations and other ethnic/racial groups. Sbe oversaw Theater from the Four Directions': a collaboration between the Pequot Museum and Trinity Repertory C()tnpany that has produced festivals, symposia and two full productions. Bdsy earned a Master of fine Arts degree in Theater Administration at the Yale Univasity School of Drama. and has on Native American artS and culture in sever,IJ antlwlogies and journal ·. She formerly served on the Board of the CoonectiCQt Council on Arts in Education and as Vice Chair of the Sec.ond Circle Board o f Atlatl Native Arts Service Organization.

only $18 for one year and $30 for two years The New Journal PO Box 3432 New Haven, CT 06520

Also sponst>rul by }ale Grovp for Jk Stl!ldy ~f N~ .AAwi«J. .Asso&ialiu11 of Natire A.mmrmu at Yak, Nmm Ameri«Ut Yale AI/II/11Ti. aNI Notit-, A.lntriam CPltllnU UIThr

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eneath the Sterling Library stacks, shielded from students and sunlight, lies the library's Preservation department. In this subterranean labyrinth of antiquated tomes, one expects to find the Seven Dwarves digging for diamonds. Instead, one .finds people of regular proportions who seem not to suffer from lack of sunlight although Betsy Haugh, the administrative _assistant, iokes, 'When I first came to work here, I thought I would need to leave a trail of crumbs to find my way around."

This maze is one of Yale's th interdependent departments of preservation divided between Sterling Memorial Library (SML), . .the British Art Center (BAC) and the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG). They care for over 11 million books and 437,000 works of art, some of which date to several thousand years BCE. Time may heal all human wounds, but all art suffers wounds over time.

Preserving these treasu is a Herculean task carried out by mortals. Seldom seen by students, conservators spend their days perforrning ads of magic to prevent the trove from decaying into dust.

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oberta Pilette, a willowy woman who goes by Bobbie, is the head of Sterling's Preservation department. She explains cheerfully that her particular department cares for all of the university's books, maps and manuscripts, including the material in Manuscripts and Archives, the Beinecke, the Medical Library and the Divinity School. At thirty years old, the department is one of the oldest in the United States.

At the end of a narrow hallway lined with bookshelves, the staff of the Reformatr ing and Media Preservation (RaMP) unit handles ·photographs,

historical sound recordings, film, slides and books. Preservation Librarian David Walls presides over scores of plastic boxes filled with books that have just returned from adventures in de-acidification. Older Western books and contemporary ones from developing countries, he explains, are printed on acidic paper that swiftly disintegrates. The books in the plastic bins are those that have returned from being soaked in magnesium carbonate, which neutralizes acid and extends the life of the book. Walls also show off hardbound photocopies of older, illustrated books, which look

and wear better than the originals.

Long-suffering books sit on a "triage cart," waiting to be reviewed. Very few will actually be discarded, - and only after they have been preserved in other formats.

More fortunate flyleaves find themselves down the hall in Collections Care, a unit that handles basic repairs and bindings. Tara Kennedy, an outgoing, bespectacled redhead wearing a bright blue-and-green checked apron, demonstrates her handiwork. She has recendy re-backed the spine of The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, and covered the green -and-orange-lettered

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binding of Gene . Stratton Porter's . programs at the University of Freckles with protective polyethylene Delaware's Winterthur School and the film. This film, Kennedy explains, University of Texas at Austin, serve as helps to preserve the covers of books training . grounds for Yale and other whose leather bindings have deterio- top research libraries.

Chief rated to a mess she calls "red rot."

Conservator Gisela Noack and her The third department is the most · assistant Lesley Santora hunch over a obscure, tucked away on the second 15th-century book with metal clasps

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which were pasted on a larger sheet of paper with glue made from bone. This glue has discolored the drawings, but she uses protease to dissolve the glue fibers and remove the stain. A moldy book sits under the "fume hood," anticipating cleansing with · a suction tool. Discolored maps sit in tubs of

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ronsonJ mezzanine of the first floor of the stacks. A sign points the way to "Conservation," but deceptively shows a man working at a printing press. The Conservation unit does not print books, but it does work vintage . machinery and many books older than Gutenberg's invention. While RaMP and Collections Care handle the holdings of 22 Yale libraries, Conservation cares exclusively for the rare material from the Beinecke and other special . collections. · The Conservation lab is brighter and more sterile than the other Preservation chambers, whose complex geographies and antique atnlospheres seem fantastic. Closer observation reveals a volm ne of Tristram Shandy squinched in a "jaw-backer," a medieval-looking instrument whose adjustable metal vice tightly compresses a book while its spine remains slightly outside, giving the book its natural shape. Another device, a torturous-looking wooden "French press" compresses many books at once, is used to reshape water-darnaged or otherwise misshapen tomes.

All members of the Conservation staff must study chemistry at a Conservation prograrn. Only a handful of such prograrns exist in the United States, but all, including the ..

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whose cover has split in half. The two fill the split with resin and plan to tone it to match the wood. Noack, an elegant woman sporting a burgundy

de-ionized, filtered water that will remove degradation products, thus · restoring the maps' original color (impure water that contains. iron will

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blazer, marbled scarf and short .auburn hair, uses her chen1istry training to salvage the most delicate cases of decay. The Conservation staff spends their days filling in missing parts of maps with siroi1arly colored old paper and using watercolors to touch up parts of these n1aps. They make boxes and bindings out of the rolls of buckram that drape down one wall, and line all kinds of paper with Japanese tissue to add st.t;ength.

Noack's most recent project is a series of small drawings by George Catlin,

cause "foxing," or red spotting). And of course, Noack points out, there are "n1any little things you can do with a hair dryer."

But rnistakes have been made. "The most horrifying [mistake] that I experienced," Noack remembers, concerned a "late 19th century in1print with purple initials. The person put it in de-acidification· solution, and there was pink running down!" Luckily, since all conservators work on the "reversibility principle," even this mistake could be repaired by applying a •

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different chemical.

Preservation is an exact science, and its .purveyors _have learned from their predecessors. Library and archive ·preservation, explains Pilehe, developed as an 'extension of art preserva• tion. When her colleagues began exploring the field thirty years ago, she •

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says, they asked themselves, "What do we take as a model from the museum world, and how do we adapt that for , . library conservation?_" One such model is the conservation lab of the · BAC. 'The small, three-chamber department on the art museum's third floor abounds in equipment similar to '

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that of the library's conservation lab.

The BAG employs. Theresa Fairbanks Harris as chief · conservator and Heather Hendry as assistant conservator, both of whom specialize in treating works of art on paper, including prints, drawings, watercolors and photographs. Harris and Hendry handle these holdings, while Mark Aronson, chief conservator for YUAG, conserves the BAC's paintings part-tirne.

Additional part-tirne contract conservators tend to objects, painted miniatures and sculpture.

While the book department learned from the example of the museum world, Harris acquired her skills as a Yale undergraduate working for Noack in the then-new book lab.

Theresa has a warm, round face and salf-and-pepper hair tied back in a low ponytail accented with a big black bow. She is fascinated by the mechanics of books, and points excitedly to several kinds of paper moulds whose weaves and .raised wire symbols produce different watermarks. The textures and watermarks these moulds yield, she explains, can be used to date and brand a piece of paper.

Today, both Harris and Aronson teach Yale courses on art• conservation. Harris's passion for pedagogy is evinced in the many labels stuck around her lab, which explain the purpose of different paper-related a.rti.., facts. A paper conservator must know the history of papermalcing in great .

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detail.. A slightly threatening wasp's nest hangs above Harris's workspace 'w ith a sign announcing, "PAPER WASP NEST INSPIRED SEARCH FOR · OTHER PAPER-MAKING FIBERS." Harris explains that wasp's nests made of chewed-up wood prompted people to seek out sources of paper stronger and more durable than rags. Ironically, 19th-century wood-pulp paper is weaker than 15thcentury rag paper, and, for this reason, it often demands more of a conservator's attention than older paper.

Before 1777, Harris explains, paper did not.-.' u~dergo chemical bleaching.

Instead, .rags used for papermaking were bleached by sunlight to a softwhite. Now, bleaching is .the most controversial practice of paper conservators, since over-emphasizing whiteness in paper tone violates the integrity of the object. For older works of art on paper, a crisp, clean look would deny the paper its tirueearned warmth of tonality and signs of age.

She believes that both students and scholars can benefit from irmnersing themselves in her field. "Art historians shouldn't be writing about art if-they don't know how it's made," she says forcefully. Unlike the materials used for a literary work, the materials used for art are integral to scholarly interpretation. While some literary scholars do draw on the knowledge of book conservators, such as students of material literary culture or the history of book ownership, art historians more frequently draw on the knowledge of art conservators. And art conservators often pursue their own . . scholarship as well.

A conservator must also consider how an individual a r tist would have wanted his or her artwork to appear.

Harris gives the example of Jarnes McNeil Whistler, who haunted old bookshops and bought blank mdsheets on which to print his etc · because he liked the tone, color and texture of •

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the older paper. A conservator like her- new .. corners with watercolors and self, therefore, should take care not to pasted these in. Like the work of the remove the dirt on a Whistler print, book conservators, all of Harris's because its ·presence may be intentional. efforts are reversible.

Because honoring the attist's intent Paper conservation tends not to be is the essence of the art conservator's . controversial, Harris says matter-oftask, the hand of the conservator factly. "Paper is not so sensational \

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should be invisible. This intent often brings conservators into conflict with private art owners, who may be unaware of the original intent or situply prefer a cleaner look. ''People always want magical things out of conservators. . . [But] you don't want it to look magically conserved, you want it to look cared for," Harris carefully explains.

As an example, she offers two copies of the same··nurer print of Mary Magdalene. One appears lifeless and flat because a previous conservator was ignorant of or insensitive to the rightful texture of a print. The other copy of the print appears "like low-relief sculpture," elegantly textured and defined. Harris proudly describes how she locally bleached disfiguring stains and washed the print in water to remove the bleach and gently clean the paper. She then drew

because the treatments are often subtle and the work is generally not hung up permanently on the wall because it will fade with exposure to light. In contrast, leaning paintings and sculptures may dramatically alter their appearance, and this elicits controversy. The paper conservation lab of ·the BAC, with its neat, modest space: reflects Harris's calm and straightforward guidance and the equanit nity and general lack of controversy that attend the practice of paper • conser vatton.

Cmrtpared to the BACs facility, the painting conservation lab of YUAG is a Willy Wonka-scale rnagic-factory. It is overseen by Senior Conservator Patricia Garland and by the alert and idiosyncratic Aronson, whose gentle, longish face is often offset by a black cowboy hat. One might say he is a conservation cowboy. While in col-

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eveloped an interest in both science and art, pursued these interests at Winterthur, and has worked as a conservator at Yale for ten years.

Or, as one might have said a century ago, he works as a"resto.r er." The controversial nature of painting conservation comes out in the politically correct distinction between "conservator" and "restorer": Before the field was professionalized in the late 19th century, self-labeled "restorers" often tried to ·improve a painting's artistry or update it by painting directly over large swaths of a work rather than subtly and deliberately altering damaged bits. These restorers gave the job a bad reputation, so now many professional restorers prefer the term "conservator.'·' In fact, a conservator does more than "restore" -that is, perform physical, hands on works to a painting. A conservator must deal with issues including heating, storage, travel conditions, light levels and humidity.

Aronson shrugs from under his black cowboy hat. "Of course, I don't care restorer, conservator ... at a party, suppose I'm asked what I do for a living? Glue."

Naturally, Aronson does much 30

more than glue. At the moment he's putting together an exhibition explaining the controversy surrounding painting and conservation techniques over the past three hundred years. The exhibition will focus on a specific painting by Benjamin West, created within what Aronson calls "a sphere of controversy and intrigue."

Around 179 5, he explains, a manu•

script circulated through London detailing the technique of Italian masters such as Titian and Corregio.

This pamphlet turned out to be a fake, but West took it seriously and followed its technical instructions.

As one might imagine, the resulting . painting was a disaster and West was lampooned in the British press for his gullibility. A decade later, however, West painted the same scene again, this time with traditional methods, to wide acclaim. The YUAG owns the new version, while the poorly executed painting remains in private hands. Aronson's exhibition would bring the two versions of the scene together and demonstrate the visual effects of different painting techniques, how these techniques stand up over time and how conser- · vation can satisfy the maintenance demands of the respective methods.

The painting conservation lab itself, temporarily relocated from its YUAG space due to construction, occupies a single large room where canvases from many periods sit propped on easels as if conversing with one another. Imposing metal

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vacuum tubes twist down from the ceiling. "Oh, elephant trunks," says Anya Shutov, a pretty, puckish intern in her last year of graduate study at Winterthur, describing the ventilation system which sucks up toxic gases from solvents. The painting lab hosts the same plethora of chemistry equipment as the other conservation labs, but everything here is on a larger scale hence the overwhelming trunk-vacuums.

Shutov shows off the canvases undergoing treatment. She points out paintings that Aronson has been cosmetically altering by cleaning and inpainting carefully painting over the canvas to even out hue or missing detail. Three rosy, fleshy women and an angel need to be cleaned. So does the vast, cloudy sky overlooking British gentlemen on a foxhunt.

Next, Shutov pauses in front of her own biggest project, an arresting painting of a dark, thin brunette staring miserably out of a canvas in miserable shape. Over the course of her internship Shutov has worked to improve the condition of the painting, if not the expression of the girl. This is a portrait of Artemesia, who has reason to look so sad: She's just eaten a potion that includes the ashes of her recently deceased husband, out of her profound love for hirn. The artist is an

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Using UV light and X-rays, Shutov can see where the painting has been previously restored and where white lead paint has been used. She can also see where the canvas has been stretched and where the originally rec-· tangular painting sacrificed its corners for an octagonal frame. A conservator before Shutov attached new corners.

Shutov stripped the paint from these areas to reveal an outrageously clashing leopard-print pattern, which she has decided to keep because "that's doing less, not more" a principle all conservators keep in tnind. Because the watercolors that previous conser-

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Kenneth and Harle Montgomey Professor of Public Interest Law at Stanford Law School •

An award-winning teacher and expert in civil rights and antidiscrimination law, Professor Karlan has represented numerous groups pro bono in the U.S. Supreme Cou~ has clerked for the cou~ and current!J serves on the California Fair Political Practices Commission.

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Thursday, April 21, 2005 at 4:00 pm Master's House, 70 High Street

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Award- · · g Vietnat11ese Poet who spoke out ·against the cotntnunist regitne and eventually itntlligrated to the US after many years of itnprisonment Tuesday April 26 at 4 pm · Berkeley College Master's House 125 High Street Co-Sponsored by the Yale Council on Southeast Asia Studies 31

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vators used on Artemesia have faded, Shutov uses more colorfast but equally removable polyvinyl-acetate paints to inpaint. At every stage of her work the intern docuinents her progress with digital photos to ease and inform the job of future conservators.

Eventually this painting will join the permanent collection.

In the case of the painting of Artemesia, conservators .c annot consult with the artist to confirm his original intent. But with contemporary art they can; and thus, some controversy may be averted. For example, Anselm Kiefer, a - living

Photo by Emily Kopley

artist, paints with lead that quickly turns to powder, and incorporates fern leaves that turn brown and fall off as well as sunflower seeds that inevitably scatter on the gallery's floors. A conservator who is unsure whether this predictable deterioration is part of Kiefer's intended effect may contact and consult with hirn about his wishes. Aronson's own experience with living artists includes tackling a frame that became infested by tern1ites. The conservator called the painter to deterrnine if the frame was special and should ~us be repaired. Her

response was immediate: "Get rid of the frame and the painting! Send it back to me and I'll give you a better one!" Aronson ended up replacing the frame, and the YUAG curator is still deliberating whether or not t.o exchang the painting. _ Most of Yale's paintings, however, are .the legacies of artists no longer alive, and in conserving these paintings, Aronson and his staff must make judicious choices about the artists' intents. Their decisions, and those of their colleagues around the world, can result in intense disagreement, such as the feud that recently resulted from the cleaning of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceilitig.

While painting conservation may be the most controversial of preservation fields, those 'who work in it receive no more glory than Noack or Harris in book restoration. In fact, what is striking and cheering about the staff of Yale's book and art preservation departments is that they all labor out of their love and respect for the artwork's integrity and for the artists' intents. They do not often curate flashy shows; they do not enjoy the renown of star professors who draw on the preservers' research, nor do they rise to the fame of the writers and artists whose works they preserve. Rather, the caretakers of Yale's library holdings and paintings act behind the scenes to mend and maintain these treasures as valuable, if not as permanent, as the seven Dwarves' diamonds. For their efforts the caretakers reap the satisfaction of ensuring that these artifacts will outlive them and continue to edify and inspire future inheritors of the world's culture. '

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Emi!J K.opley, a junior in Branford, zs an associate editor of TNJ.

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ont:ea!ed behin?. consrete buzzing with fluorescent light. Walk siding and tinted windows, . down the narrow hallway past several number 924 is one of many ' 'small offices and you'll fmd the doorgarage-like structures on way to the main office, also known as Grand Avenue. It might be over- the "stricdy business" room. (This dislooked entirely if not for its contradic- tinguishes it from the lounge next tory markings: black graffiti brands door, whose fuzzy couches and elabo. . the side of the building a "ghetto" but rate stereo system eliminate the possithe red and white letters stenciled op. bility of accomplishing any business.) the front door read, "oasis."

The walls of the office are papered Somewhere between ghetto and with reams of newsprint outHning oasis lies Youth Rights Media , goals, schedules and talking points. a nonprofit advocacy group that mar- Towards the back of the room, above .

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shals New Haven teens to defend three small computer desks, hang ' · their rights and the rights of others photos of black activists and other thr<?ugh the innovative use of public , revolutionaries. Two posters of Che service announcements (PSAs). Laura . Guevara stand guard over the organiMcCargar, the group's executive direc- zation's office. "Hasta Ia victoria siemtor, along with program coordinators pre/' they proclaitn: "always until vicStephen Taylor and Hiram Rivera, tory." works year-round with New Haven Against this backdrop of legendary teenagers to turn their real-life experi- insurgents I first meet Laura. Always ences into life-changing activism. rushing despite her high-heeled boots, But the chang~s aren't only public. she greets me warmly but wastes no Within the walls of Youth Rights tirne with pleasantries. Today is the Media exists another support struc- first day of the new Media Lab sesture: one of supervision, safety and sion, she explains. Media Lab is one of respect. For kids abandoned by the the many divisions of Youth Rights system, Youth Rights Media provides Media, intended to introduce the teens a safeguard, a structure and a home. to video equipment and production techniques. The teens involved with · -secine hundred and twenty-four the Lab will produce two Grand Avenue is a maze of ond PSAs with messages of their sparsely furnished rooms choice. When the 61 rns are finished,

there will be a ~creening 1:?-eld fqr family and friends at a Media Showcase event before the tapes 'are sent to ' ' . .

CTv, Connecticut's public access network. Most of the kids I meet are here for the first time. They've been recruited from local high schools, referred by juvenile care officers or brought along by friends who participatee in the program.

"We'll be getting started soon, so make yourself at home, you know, introduce yourself to everyone."

Laura's voice acquires a serious overtone as she examines me with cool blue eyes. "The kids like to know who's in the space."

She leaves the room and I'm standing helplessly, clinging to the table and unsure of how to proceed. I smile hesitandy at two girls sitting at a table..

They smile back and introduce themselves as sisters, Trenna and Ashley.

Trenna has been part of YRM since its inception and now works as an aide to Laura and a mentor for new teens.

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We barely make it through introductions before Karl, another youth moderator and YRM veteran, lopes by in search of wayward teens. He pauses to acknowledge Steve, the media coordinator, staring bemusedly at a cluster of three computer screens, all of which feature different iterations of Karl's face. "Karl's got his picture on every computer in here!" Steve announces . parttcn . 1ar. "Who au thorto no one m . d thi s.-;>" lZe Karl stnirks and ignores hin1, continuing his search for unaccounted-for teenagers. "Where are the happy campers?" he yells indignandy.

"Come on!"

Eventua11y the "happy campers" are corralled into a large ,room where most of the planning takes place. The room's perirneter displays tituelines, schedules, movie ideas and lists of rules, but the focal point is a life-sized oudine of a body tacked to the far wall. The body is tattooed with hand'

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written words, feelings, dos and · "racial profiling." She treats them like don'ts. Outside its lines are "drugs," adults and challenges them to debates: "guns," "racism," and their coro11aries, "Why is it natural for you to be told while inside are "friendship," "hon- that you fit the picture of a qjtninal?" esty," "self-respect," and other posi- she asks pointedly. "Why is it natural tive adjectives. The boundaries of the that altnost everyone in this room has body are one line of defense against been locked up?" the world's ugliness, and the density of words on both sides shows how seriRM began in 2002 during ous the battle is.

Laura's senior year at Yale.

The only seating in the room conWith two friends at Yale Law sists of twenty wheeled office chairs which the kids use as bumper cars to School, she applied for a grant from convert the space into a roller rink, the Yale Entrepreneurial Society to launching themselves like pinballs itnplement a youth advocacy project. around the room as Laura attempts to They won the grant, and before she introduce herself and the program. knew it, Laura had agreed to be the Blessed with the ability to cornmand organization's director. order, Laura preet npts chaos by asking She relates in detail the difficulties the group what kinds of issues they of trying to convince people of think a PSA should involve. Calls YRM's legiritnacy ("We had one roo~ emerge from a rapt crowd: "youth and no phone, and no insurance. I . .

II II • 1 II unpnsontnent, don't know how to get insurance!") , of gun vto ence, •

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finding sqmeone to help with the technical aspects of the group ("I know nothing about media, it's rniraculous that Steve ever picked up the phone"), of maneuvering the treacherous maze of red tape that chokes even the most well-intentioned organizations ("What do I know about writing contracts? How do you run a board meeting?"), and the ultixnate gratification of doing what she loves, which is working with the kids ("You get your ass pummeled''). Even now she seems deeply affected by her experiences. "It was really lonely," she reflects quietly. "You're learning so much, so much. But you have to give so much of yonrseJ-f away."

She stresses that complete openness is vital to face the kinds of issues the kids encounter on a daily basis. She gives the exa111ple of an incident in a train station where an older man 35

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approached the group and asked her, point blank, if she liked working with little black children. The kids leapt to her defense, she says, but that didn't make the situation easier. "Doing this kind of work, there's no way to avoid those conversations. Part of the responsibility of anyone who's white and doing this work is to have these conversations with the kids, to talk it out." The sassy combination of Laura's erudite vocabulary and street smarts complement her core strength.

"Race has never been something that I've felt apologetic about, because I think to be apologetic is to feel guilty, and then the work is to clear your personal guilt, and if the work is to clear your personal guilt, you're not her~ for the right reasons. Do I carry privilege because of race, because of my Yale education? Absolutely. But am I going to use it to make changes?

Absolutely."

And she has. YRM's most successful project to date is a ·26-tninute documentary about the Connecticut Juvenile Training School (CJTS).

Marketed as a juvenile rehabilitation facility, the school resembled a prison more than a center of learning.

Allegations of abuse and other ·scandals have plagued the school, and YRM's documentary confirmed many people's worst fears by exposing that the school did not educate teens as it promised, and that guards abused teens without provocation. After visiting the center, many of YRM's teens were adamant that it be permanently closed. With their mission decided, they took their documentary on the road. The film's statewide tour, along with the activism of other advocacy groups, has prompted Governor Jodi Rell to appoint a task force to review CJTS and to investigate the possibility of its repetitive closure.

In addition to the short PSAs the teens are currendy filming, YRM continue[ to work on longer docntnentades ·about drug sentencing dispari•

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ties and the harmful effects of unjustified school suspensions on at-risk youth. The organization actively recruits new members and pushes aggressively to get the teens' work seen by policy-makers. Anonymous teens have become activists whose work has . a statewide impact. Each new project emboldens them, and makes the possibility of change more immediate and real.

of an uncanny Ward Cleaver. "No dad's like, 'Hello son, how was your day at school? Would you mind taking out the trash?"' He grins and shakes his head. "Naw man, they're like, 'If you don't take that trash outside I'm gonna whoop your ass so hard you wish you'd never been born."' No one disagrees, but rules are rules, and the fuming of the PSAs proceeds curse-free.

early half the teens enrolled in the program have spent rirne in the custody of the Connecticut Department of Children and Fami1ies, dealt extensively with the court system or lived in group homes. They joke about 'verbal and phys~cal abuse tritely, tossing out tales of near-death experiences as casually as the results of last night's Knicks game.

The irony is that the abusive realities of their lives are too severe for public access. One afternoon when Hiram, Sara, Marcus and I are writing lines for a scene in which two parents verbally abuse their daughter, Sara demands to know why she can't use the word "slut." "It's TV, you can't curse," replies Hiram, exasperated-he has already reminded the kids of this limitation several titnes. · Hiram is YRM's newest staff member: focused, dedicated and an example of ·what class clowns grow up to be. But the grin that normally lights his face has faded as he listens to the teens float plot ideas that draw on their own experiences with their parents. Despite his practical admonition that, "In real life, there are no happy endings, and that's the message you gotta put out there," Hirant winces when Sara shrugs and defends her word choice, "That's what my mom said to me."

Later, Tim voices sitnilar frustrations about the narrative restrictions imposed on his PSA. He stares benevolently into the camera, taking voice

side from problems with language, the main production dilemma is "terrible acting," the blanket term Steve and Hiram apply to more or ·less ever · g that transpires in front of the camera.

Which is why at 5:30 one afternoon, only four sessions before the Media Showcase, we fmd ourselves sitting in . the lounge with a rotating crew of 12 teens, trying unsuccessfully to shoot the first ten seconds of a PSA about domestic abuse. The premise of the intra is that the mother Jamie admonishes the father Tim, to discipline their teenage son Lyonel. Jamie, a feisty 15year-old who barely reaches five feet, is impeccably dressed in a clingy, sleeveless white shirt and tight blue jeans. As the crew sets up the video equipment she carefully positions herself in her chair, winks coyly at the camera and, stniling flirtatiously, launches Take one.

"Your son has not been goin' to school," accuses Jarnie, beginning to count on her fingers. "He's always cotnin' around here with an his little friends, and they be smokin', and drinkin' and bringing drugs into the house, and I will not have drugs in this house, you understand me? And furthermore your son is not listening to me; he is being very disrespectful to me, and you're gonna have to do something about it because I will not be treated that way in this house!"

She's still calling out crimes in a gleeful in1itation of her own mother when Hiratn yells "Cut!" He's laughing too

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hard to look as severe as he'd like. Jamie looks around.

"What?"

Take tw~: Jamie makes it : ;.< : : i' . through one sentence and · _·• : •· · •i' •,: '_·' · · .

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collapses into giggles. Take _ three: Jamie manages to get •- · • · · ·• . _. _· ._ · · · all three lines out, Tim stares . at her blankly. Abraham • ·.• _: ' • drops the sound boom into .., '·· ,·, •' '·

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the shot. Take four: Jamie accuses Tim of trying to make her laugh. Take five: _ _ Jamie nails it, but Tim only . < ,· •.'_: .· · .·' ': . ;< : ! • : ••• •: tnanages to announce, "Yo, when . that boy get home-" before falling out of his chair. Take six: Hiram attacks Tim with the football.

In the end, there is an hour -• .of footage and one usable minute. It will take a Herculean feat of editing to make the PSA suitable for television, but the final product is stunning in its simplicity. On the n't make me feel like I had nothing to night of the Media Showcase, a room- live for then maybe my self-esteem ful of parents and friends falls silent wouldn't be so low. I also learned not as Jamie lists her son's offenses and to get attached to people because I Tim threatens to teach hirn a lesson feel that they will verbally abuse me, "like my father taught me." _ While - or worse. But I can't keep speaking on waiting for his son to arrive home, my past. Now that I look at this audiTim flashes back to his own child- ence of people I wish that my mother hood memories of abuse, and when who abused me to the point where she Lyonel walks in, he chooses not to hit tried to kill me could be here. That's him. "Don't make the same choices why I want to help youth, so they go through what I your parents made," cautions the won't voiceover. "Break the chain of abuse." went through."

Thunderous applause ruptures the When the lights buzz back on, Sara rises to read her speech. Her voice stunned silence as a grinning Sara rings clearly through a silent room. walks back to her seat. It's Marcus' "This topic is important to me turn now. He walks to the podium, his because I think that many of our clothes hanging on his lanky frame. youth are dea1ing with matters just like "I didn't write anything," he says hurthis. I was also verbally abused riedly. "This is from the heart. Coming throughout my life. I an1 now 16 here was, like, a big step for me, and years-old, and the abuse in my fami1y you know, I look up to everybody." He got to the point that I had to be taken pauses and studies the podium.

"That's all I got to say." out of the house.

After the Showcase several teens "I know that I made a lot of bad decisions that reflected on the abuse I hover around Laura, asking about the got at home. Maybe if my parents did- next project and promising faithful .,

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attendance. In the weeks to follow, their faces will not disappear, but become fixtures of 924 Grand Avenue as they turn to bigger projects: taking on the New Haven police deparunent in a student-led teach-in and the Connecticut House of Representatives in an effort to change unfair drug laws. Their oasis draws them in even when they are not scheduled; they will bring their friends and their friends' friends; they will ask Laura for help with homework and college applications and probation officers. The work will be hard: The world outside of the body will penetrate uninvited. But right now, uniformed in black, white and red Youth Rights Media tee-shirts, the teens resetnble the posters of Che Guevara that preside over the strictly business rootn: a gueri11a band of revolutionaries. The only difference is, they are just getl iog started.

Casey Miner, a senior in Pierson lege, is on the staff of TN].

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he next titne you W:~ down time to recognize the deliberation and Sterling, it would have been no less charWall Street, pause be'fw:een the craftsmanship that went into creating acteristic of the Collegiate Gothic style, Law School an4 : i Sterling the windows pays tribute to the art and but no single engraving or window Memorial Library (SNiL). Just its academic patton. would have looked the same. The winbefore Wall Street hits York; .~gok at the Beginning in the early 1900s, Yale . dow.s are a memory of a moment lost in windows that pierce s~ts heavy received several large donations that orne. masonry fas:ade. If the day;i is bright, inspired a proliferation of campus-wide Rogers hired G. Owen Bonawit to you'll s_e e .a window paintingdepicting building projects. In 1911, the design the windows of SML. During the Queen of Hearts sitr ing:Qft ,fl bench University appointed a conunittee to the 1920s and '30s, Bonawit was a next to - a box labeled "tarts;~~;. And a oversee construction alongside architect skilled and well-known window painter. trapezoidal plum pudding ili~~6t middle James Gamble Rogers, who designed Like all of the craftsmen hired to of a window bay. And an l! !feminate SML as well as several other Yale build- embellish Rogers' brainchild, Bonawit . boy siu ing at a table, ~amp]tiJgLa stew. ings. Rpgers and the committee agreed . enjoyed a fajr amount <;>f artistic license. a And ... a book? · :.j1l';.l. · that the new buildings should con- Occasi'ona1ly the Yale. conimihee pro. The qgok doesn'r..,,,pt di~l!fEpicqt:ean , tribute to the.Collegiate Gothic style of posed specific images and plates to be " th~h"te: ..J::i\Jt. Jt ~~n't al~ys dit;re. A pic~ ;; the ~ampus. ·.· Thm.tgh modeled after replicated · in window form, but the ttit~ o( Uft:le Black s~ri,.bqjrlut~hing a Oxford and Cambridge, Collegiate University mainly offered only written watermelon used to be in its place, or, as it is officially titled according F<? the Yale University Library Gazette, an ·~chive of • • the library's images, "Ne~9 i: dtring a watermelon." When the . lil:i.fary was --~~ ---:i~~i ,_:renovated in 1995 and the Windows were carefully removed to be .,.cleaned, . :)#:- .

Little Sambo was freed frorr;_ his glass • • • • • • and lead shackles because he was deemed offensive. Instead, . a happy book took his place near the smiling cook, the Queen of Hearts scarfing Gothic was considered · a stricdy suggestions. Bonawit' s creative freedom down her tarts and the other gourmand American style that it~~itated medieval was virtually unfettered. window paintings that line•, the SML cathedrals strongholds of the educatAlthough Bonawit looked to the winstaff lunch room. ed during the Middle Ages-but echoed dows of medieval cathedrals for inspiraYale's decision to remove the Sambo more contemporary Bauhaus, Art Deco tion, the windows of a library serve a window suggests that the University and Modern architec~al styles. distinctly different function than the believes people actually recog••jze the The Gothic style offered the ornate stained glass of a church. In a church, deliberate placement of window paint- decoration and monumental stature that the windows hover above naves and ings in the library. But most Y alies are American colleges wanted their edifices · apses, leu ing in just enough light to conditioned to the catnpus' Collegiate to possess. The "unity in diversity" glimpse the other end of the church.

Gothic style: The library is not regarded mantra of Gothic architecture influ- More importantly, the light is elevated ·as an art gallery. While library employ- enced Rogers, who encouraged the and reverential. In a ID>rary, however, ees may notice the window paintings artists and craftsmen he hired to express there must be sufficient light to pern tit that dominate their office space, stu- individuality and creativity in their work. reading. S'mce this light should be at eye dents seldom trek up to the reading The window handles, engravings, gar- level, every turn and sn1udge of the rooms and offices in the stacks. SML goyles and painted windows reflect the brush channels the light toward a readhas 3,300 windows which took months myriad moods of these at tists. Had er's nose. Structurally, the coarse lead to design, paint and install. Taking the another team of craftsmen ornamented cames that hold the glass in place don't - --

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seem heavy; but up close, distortions, flaws and the hammer marks that sized and shaped the lead are apparent. As a result, the painted parts of the windows are confmed to legal pad-sized ditnensions, and the rest of the window is composed of clear or mildly tinted glass, all from 'France. The paintings are detailed with the "stick-work" technique;which entails outlining the image with a dark brown paint, staining the opposite side of the glass with a wash and fu:ing the panel to bond the paint to the glass. The panel is then mounted in lead earning with the stained part facing outward, and the window is installed.

Unfortunately, lead cames are · soft and seep down to the bottom of the structure over time, deforming the glass by creating a concave or convex effect.

This causes gaps between the glass and the cames. The result is an ineffective way to insulate the building, and occasionally the windows · have been removed to hammer the lead back out and create flatter windows. lri the climate-controlled stacks, new rubbersealed glass has been installed a few inches from the original window. But the flawlessness of the factory-made glass is an aesthetic flaw it can never be as attractive as the original uncased window.

It seems fitting that Yale possesses windows that predate the concept of climate control. Rogers is famous for trying to make Yale look old, and in SML, his "cathedral of learning," he created niches for statues that never existed and disguised the elevator machinery on the roof as a turreted French pavilion. Bonawit responded by crafting patina window images that look aged, and slicing many of his images with "mending lead," which thoughtfully avoided the most important parts of Bonawit's paintings.

Bonawit blended Collegiate Gothic with the then-trendy Art Deco style by reinterpreting classical images with modern movernent and composition.

He designed every window that now separates the Periodicals room from the Music Ubrary, and the characters in the •

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room Jump, sway and run with new life across the six window bays. The poses and motions of the mythic figures are modern: October, a sinewy young fellow, is folded in half like an innovative Pilobolus dancer, peering into a basket, while April languidly skips like a nine-year old girl through a field.

Bonawit preferred a secular context to the eccle~iastical, fitr ing for a moment in history that saw a rising interest in the painted and stained glass windows of residences and schools. He also designed the windows for some of Yale's older residential colleges, as well as parts of Duke, Princeton, Northwestern and the University of Chicago. When designing the windows for a church, the subject matter is iconographic. But a library hosts a vast body of cultural, historical and literary knowledge, as a center of creativity and innovation. In the academic atmosphere of SML, apostles and the Virgin Mary would be uncomfortably out of place. Thus, the committee decided that the windows lining the seminar and reading rooms in the stacks should represent literary characters and historical scenes that correspond to each room's intended use. The windows of the Natural Sciences seminar room display a menagerie of birds, fish, reptiles and a dragon. The medical study room displays an apothecary, botanists and a doctor in a laboratory.

But not all rooms still serve the purpose they were intended to when the library opened in 1931. When you enter

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room 218, you see a sign on the door·it probably says something. like, "Do not eat in here," or "Please be respectful of other people in the room." It's in Chinese and is not translated. As remembered by its windows~ this is the East Asia reading room. Korean and Japanese characters paint the spine of each book; nothing references Western culture except the windows. This room originally held the Yale Collection of Amedcan Literature (Y~AL). But YCAL grew too large for this modestlysized room so it migrated to the Beinecke, and the East Asia collection set up shop in its place. Today, a student scouring a Japanese magazine at the lonely wooden table might rest his or her eyes on Hiawatha's heavy brow or Huck Finn's smirk. A few windows over, Ichabod Crane clings to a bony horse and speeds through an orange autumn forest. Poor Ichabod his frightened face will never land on his own story, much less the language in

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The East Asia reading room is not an anomaly; other rooms have mismatched windows and subjects as well.

An example of this discontinuity is Room 322, which used to host history seminars. The windows narrate the discovery of America and its tumultuous consequences. Pizarro's bust peers nobly into the room; Columbus stakes out the West Indies; and Bostonians throw tea into the dark Atlantic Ocean.

The window paintings chronicle an American titneline, but no American history books are shelved in here.

Instead, the books are historiographies of ther Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The Yale Babylonian Collection now lives in 322, which houses the United States' largest collection of cuneiform inscriptions. In their midst, a glass painting exalting the founding of Quinnipiac, Connecticut reads, "The wilderness shall bloom." One has to read pretty far into this backdrop of a boy poring over flaky yellowed pages to find a con- · nection with the Hittites.

Down the hall from Yale's Babylonian Collection is the African Studies Room, a space that Bonawit could not have anticipated any more than he foresaw the offense caused by · Little Black Samba. The rooni's windows are actually devoted to "transportation by water," but perhaps "kinds of boats" would be a more fitting description. The first of four windows displays the trireme, a distinguished Greek fighting boat. Next to it, a two-foot wide strip of wall supports a framed photograph of the earth as seen from outer space. The next bay holds a painted window of the Santa Maria, and the next strip of wall displays a 1994 poster advertising "Margins to Mainstream: Lost South African Photographers." Then there's the clipper ship window. And where the Yale Library Gazette claims an ocean liner tribute should be painted on the glass, there is an air conditioning unit.

The replacement is a slap in the face to Bonawit and Rogers. African Studies should not be squeezed into the Transportation by Water Room, and

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One window d~picts two men in what a .fourth-grader might call "pilgrim hats" standing on a beach, watching a ship sail away. This is the Phantom Ship, which left the dismal port city of New Haven in 1647 laden with goods and intellectuals who had the potential to save the failing colony. Months passed without news of the ship until one day, local citizens announced that the great ship could be seen on the horizon. Residents flocked to the beach, and conftrmed that this was indeed their ship. They held their vigil, watching the ship toss in the choppy sea until the main mast appeared to break off. The smaller masts followed, and the ship rolled over and sank into the mist. It was never seen again, and no wreckage was found. Now the phantom ship lives only in New Haven leg- end, in a window painting in SML. Installing and caring for so many windows requires a great deal of titne and labor. Bonawit hoped the effort would be justified by a heightened aesthetic experience when studying in SML. Perhaps, back when the seminar rooms still hosted classes, the windows served a grander purpose. Students saw them every day and studied romance languages in the satne room that displays Moliere's La Malade Imaginaire. But over time, new rooms replaced the old as history changed the nature of the collections. Now, a dwindling number of people climb the stacks and curl up in a secluded armchair with a good book under a muddied window depicting s the centerpiece of the library, John Locke or an abacus.

Then again, Bonawit's travails will the great hall of SML appropriately devotes its eighty windows always mean something even if only a to the history of Yale and New Haven. · handful of students stop looking A student rings Yale's college bell when through the windows to look at them. he shouldn't have, and the president of Rogers and Bonawit wanted Yalies to the University claps the delinquent's relate to and interact with Yale's archiears. Mittened boys gleefully clear snow tecture. The entire school is, in that from an Old Campus pathway. And sense, a window-painting. then there is the window painting entitled, "Five Sophomores and Freshmen L:me Rick, a sophomore in Morse College, is a steal eight hens from Widow Brockett's Circulations and Subscriptions Manager henhouse, pluck and cook them, and oJTNJ. are caught in the act of eating them, 1764."

41 Bonawit's art should not be replaced by an air conditioning unit. These windows are art, and Bonawit devoted countless hours to each image.

Disregarding the intent and subject matter of the window paintings undertnines Rogers and Bonawit's original vision. Even if students don't look at the windows, even if the use of the rooms doesn't correspond to the narrative of the windows, the changes belittle the essence of Bonawit's art.

Only a few windows share the fate of the ocean liner. The saddest window in the library is back in the East Asia .

Reading Room. An image portraying Oliver Wendell Holmes' "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" has been replaced by a bumpy rectangle of foggy glass resting awkwardly in the center of the window.

Of course, windows will break, especially when they are over seventy years old. Anticipating this, Yale has photographed and documented every window painting. But no one specializes in the art of painting on glass anymore, at least not with Bonawit's finesse. And when one of his window paintings breaks, Yale has no option but to plop a plain, occasionally colored window in the broken window's place. In the case of Samba and his watermelon, the University tried to find someone to manufacture another window with a more appropriate subject, but amidst the other images, the book has the effect of a baby giraffe trying to walk on ice surely a misstep.

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even women, five on there's a fme line between loving too wooden stools, bright little and. loving too much (see aforelights skimming off a mentioned punishment.)

With these rules in mind, I enlisted shoulder, an arm, illuminating an eye. Two others as a Vagina Warrior. My batde: to help veiled in flittering shadows. Script in coordinate V-week and its culminating hand, I listen to the five voices quake event, a production of the Vagina with fear, undulate with memory, swell with grace. Forgetting the reverence and propriety usually commanded by the walls of a Yale classroom, we settle on our haunches and yank womanhood from the script, looking to it for what being in fen1inine skin is about.

• Performing the Vagina Monologues requires visceral interaction. In a massive classroom in Street Hall, I begin to drown in velvet sentirnent and . Monologues. smell the hutnan musk of fen1ininity.

When I was 15, I remember a news Fetninine. Fe-male. Fe-Yale. Female telecaster announcing in a pritn voice, at Yale. I will be honest. Prior to work- "Playwright Eve Ensler ·brings the ing on the Vagina Monologues, my Vagina Monologues to HBO. More to thoughts of what it means to be a follow on the six o'clock news." Try as woman on catnpus were flitnsy con- I might, I could not (perhaps would templations at best. My knowledge not is more honest) get that wordthen was an array of random things- "vagina" out of my head. My you-just-know, a jumbled survival Haitian parents never referred to the guide: Leave your dorm alone past ten region except when my rnother o'clock at your own peril. Drinking at rerninded my sister ·and me to wash frat parties without a watchful gaggle our "shooshoons" and to keep our of friends can be fatal. Be "one of the legs closed so no one could see our. boys" in academia deft and definite "shooshoons." The technical term and in your analyses. Keep that skirt to an I weren't formally introduced until appropriate length yop're a Yale seventh grade, when my biology lady. Speaking of short skirts, watch teacher, Mrs. Coates, threatened to II • II til k that :reputation. (I once knew a girl rna e my cl ass say vagtna un we with an "unacceptable" number of stopped laughing. At that point, the male friends; punishment: character word was a cellar secret but necesdefamation; accusers: male and fetna1e sary. So I was shocked and a little tera1ike.) And, in the dicey dance of love, rified when I heard the word "vagina"

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used in public, under scrutiny in the . media harsh spotlight. I had to get my hands .on a copy of the play.

"Pappy, take me to Blockbuster.

Please?" Surreptitiously, I combed the rows until I found the videocassette with Eve Ensler sitting atop a stool,

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her coral :red lips opened in an oval. A little like a vagina, I thought. I handed the tape to my father, banking on his lack of English proficiency to save me from mortification. He failed to escape embarrassment when the cashier gave him a fifty-or-so Haitian iuunigrant with a copy of the Vagina Monologues a peculiar look; I've since called hit n my first, albeit unwilling, feminist. After a litde explaining and coaxing, he's formally taken on the tide.

On the tape, what a fen1aJe! At the end of Easler's performance, I had heard the word "vagina" so many times my ears were smarting. After a while, the stinging sensation of hearing and thinking about my vagina with such intensity faded to a dull buzz.

Wo-man, woman, womanhood. The return to the pitter-patter rhytbtn of daily existence dented those thoughts.

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Sure, going to an all-girl school helped me understand femininity, but this fetnininity was new and imperfect.

Four years later, the email subject "Vagina Monologues" delivered a shiver of .shock to my body. It's not everyday the word "vagina" busts into an email subject-line. On that day, December 4, 2004, I, Elizabeth, signed away my old ways when I hit the reply button. I had no clue what I • • was ge~tttng mto.

Much of the feminist philosophy embedded in the script of the Vagina Monologues seeks to demystify worp.anhood. Ensler's argument is that the present environment in which girls are raised propagates a stereotype of what it means to be a woman. This environment rejects the diversity of womanhood in favor of one "perfect female."

Consequently, women grow to be ashamed of their bodies and sexuality.

But Ensler frowns on women who "masculinize" themselves to be one of the boys. Rather, an ideal society would recognize differences between men and women and respect both sexes equally. Ensler's philosophy is played up by the shock factor of the Vagina Monologues with its shock factor: The word "vagina" is mentioned over thirty tit.nes and each monologue is unabashedly provocative. The play deconstructs the "perfect woman" to. show that fetnininity comes in all shapes and sizes. Womanliness has no single definition; a woman is what and how she chooses to be.

In spite of having already seen Ensler weep, bellow, whisper about the female condition, when preparing for the Vagina Monologues production four years later, I was still no feminist convert. I was certainly awed, and perhaps even inspired to inspect my own vagina, but I dared not call myself a feminist. Ijke other Yale ladies, I had begun sentences with, "I'm not a feminist but ... " I liked tny bras, my hygiene and my men, thank you very much. I couldn't help but be haunted •

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by visions of unsightly cave women.

The word seemed outdated, even irrelevant considering the voting rights, education and access to most professions that women had gained in the past century. The job was done, and the ancient machine which built it up ought to be torn down.

As production started, odd instances and facts began to pop out at me. It was as though someone had gone through and vividly highlighted them with a massive yellow marker; certain memories, certain places, certain_facts took on a fluorescent glow that I could not blithely avoid. They harkened my eyes and turned my ears to hear their call. The warrior (a vaginal one) had heard the battle cry.

Chit chatter. "Nobody likes her."

"Did you see her with hitn?" "She makes me ·sick." "A slut." Like the Democratic Party, I discovered that sisterhood is full of factions and opposing values. One lady's expectations are another lady's litnits. For my fortunate male counterparts, "slut" does not have the same derisive effect.

He may be relegated the tide "playa," but how enticing! He is a Don Juan, not a whore.

To complement sisterhood's internal strife, I began to notice what I call the desire for self· · arion. In one day I counted 175 derogatory conunents pertaining to weight, hair style and looks-a value which averages to 15 insults per hour. This need to breakdown the self Ensler says, "Is like an addiction. You have to tnake that conscious effort will you pick up selfhatred today?"

In 1969, Yale College accepted its first women. That was 73 years after Duke, 79 years after Stanford (which accepted women &om its inception) and 104 years after Cornell. The stodgy historical figures whose portraits overlook my meals are predotninandy male. Like it or not, these fellows shaped Yale's history, and as former President of Duke and Yale •

alumna, N annerl Keohane succinctly noted, the portraits are evidence of "who matters around this place."

A look at the University's academic environment shows that only 19 percent of its tenured faculty are female.

Recent studies observing the classroom behavior of Yale and Harvard students demonstrate that women are three titnes more likely to talk with professors of the same sex. Men spoke two and a half titnes longer than women, who were interrupted incessantly. Each female student must defend herself against male Yale, other ladies with viperous tongues and, at titnes, herself.

A week prior to opening night of the Vagina Monologues, my friend Cara's relationship with her boyfriend was in danger. Continuous verbal abuse had eroded their mutual respect, and words like "bitch" becarne thoughdess interjections and insults. Unfounded jealousy, accusations and suspicion abounded; Cara felt uncomfortable and depressed. Prompted by pressure from their friends, the two concluded that a serious talk was in order. Friday evening was the proposed date for a conversation, but Michael · chose to drink excessively before the scheduled discussion and much to our consternation, he became violent and alarmingly belligerent. Michael grabbed Cara and they retreated to an undisclosed location to begin their discussion. I have seldom been as frightened for someone's safety. So an anxious Seattle native, a liberal Texan and I set out to find her. We searched throughout the college, looking in empty rooms, the courtyard, even the library, in hopes of whisking Cara away from irnpending danger. When we found them, Cara appeared safe, sitting on a ' chair talking to Michael though she later confided he had been aggressively throwing furniture before we arrived. The decision they made was to remain in a relationship. Frankly, it was disappointing to see how trivial •

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his violence was to her, not to mention his belittling of her womanhood.

That experience riled the dormant feminist within me to notice the conditions that I, like Cara, had come to accept.

On our grand ivy campus I had · encountered, through Cara, a situation that I had assumed only existed elsewhere. A woman's need to protect herself was a moot point, I thought.

Yet the reality of my fear for Cara was, in fact, quite significant. This fear roused me from my delusions and I began to recognize that the thingsyou-just-know were not so implied. r They ~ere defense mechanism against a threatening outside world.

Easler's voice trembles in front of six hundred Yale students: "When this world starts respecting our women, then this earth will be right with itsel£ When we believe in the feminine, the course of nature will change." In the darkness, I stare up at the five women pulsing in red dresses and am starded to find that Ensler is nearly in tears. We did something right. In the same darkness that engulfed us every night for rehearsal, I understand that performance night is my salvation. Six hundred Yalies (save a few shy ones) shouted "cunt" at the top of their lungs, blessing that word. They held the most sacred hush I've ever heard in a theater during a segment on a Bosnian woman's aware of it now. When I enlisted as a brutal rape. And if I could botde the Vagina Warrior, I had unwittingly electricity surging through the Yale embarked on an epic journey. between the statistics about Law School when Molly Fox per- Somewhere formed nine different types of sexual women at Yale, Cara's struggle for selfmoans, _ concluding with the nearly respect and freeing myself from the palpable triple orgasm, it'd be a Red expectations of womanhood, I learned to understand mysel£ My shooshoon Bull with wings.

Afterwards, people exited the theater was repressed; now it is alive. I'm not saying they had never felt so free. afraid to think about my vagina anyMaybe shouting "cunt" or listening to more. It's like waking up from a drunkmoans in public helped cause that sen- en stupor to the moment of clarity and sation, but something more had hap- the severe headache that escorts the pened. Free. Feer. Fear. Freedom. That reality of the morning after.

The rest of the world, unfortunatelast word meant redemption. I was afraid, am still afraid, but at least I'm ly, did not wake up with me. I till can-

April2005

not party alone at a frat or roll up my skirt, even though I like the feel of the breeze traveling up my legs. But I now know that I am afraid. I know this world is no utopia. Maybe President Bush would be pleased with my stance on rny right to self-defense.

So to freedom I go~ This is one instance when ignorance is not bliss.

I've let it all in into my shooshoon: my heart.

Elizabeth St. Victor, a freshman in Silliman College, is on the staff of TN].

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by Mina Kimes •

s I join the ranks of rising juniors departing from the residential college system next year, I can feel my cool points surging dailY:. Moving off campus is hip: It means house parties, halogen lights and closets that can hold more than two hangers. Unfortunately, it also means handling my own meals a step towards adulthood I'm not quite ready to take. After calculating that ordering takeout every night next year would slash through my meager savings in about three weeks, I vowed to teach myself to cook.

It didn't go well.

Consequently, I've devised an innovative approach to off-campus dining that combines frugality and · · culinary exertion: free food. Like the tight-fisted uncle who scarfs down an entire basket of corn chips at a Mexican restaurant, I plan to reduce spending by increasing sampling. After serious field work; including polling the homeless, I decided to put my plan .t o the test by embarking on a one-day mooching spree. Twenty-four hours, no dining ha11s, zero purchased food: one hundred percent fare gratis. .

My penny-pinching adventure began at midnight, and I was prepared. At 12:01, I hunched over a garbage bag outside Atticus Bookstore and Cafe, hoping to scrounge up enough sustenance to get me through the next day. But the next morning, I awoke twenty minutes before my first class to find that all that remained of my roasted garlic ciabatta loaf was a gnawed crust of bread.

One of my roommates walked by and s ed apologetically.

"Sorry...we got hungry last night. It's not like you paid for it."

After grazing on the meager remains of my loaf throughout Spanish, I sidled into Au Bon Pain and nonchalantly asked for soup samples of Jamaican black bean and minestrone. The chef, a heavyset woman with a faint moustache, handed me two shot-glass-sized cups filled to the brim. I downed them, wrinkled my nose, and kindly requested the chicken florentine. But before I could plead for chowder, she rolled her eyes and ~ed away. I licked my lips and crawled out like the rat that I was.

After staring at a box of graham crackers in my room (pre-purchased and thus forbidden) for half an hour, I decided it was time for dessert. I happily noted that one of the more hippie-like · the counter free love, free food, Ashley's employees was right? so I asked for a taste of cinnamon ice cream.

He handed me a spoonful the size of a fingenaai1.

I frowned at it, then nibbled slowly. A thousand of these samples wouldn't get me anywhere. I had to hnny to reach Tasti DLite before class, so I darted out of Ashley's with a vision of waffle cones teeming with creamy sorbet. When I reached Tasti-D, I breathlessly asked to try all four flavors: The condiment cups_were fairly sizeable (about three spoonfuls each), and I lined them up on the only bench in the stark room. While •

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the cashiers watched, I slowly sucked the contents of the Tirarnisu sample, ignoring the chemical aftertaste. I shivered with pleasure, then glanced at the door, hoping a new customer would distract the workers. No such-luck. They watched me with repulsed fascination, and I pretended not to notice. After downing the fourth cup, I touched the phone in my bag and rattled it as though it were vibrating.

"Uh, phone call. Be right back. To buy something." The cashiers stared in disbelie£ I stumbled over the bench and out the door, then dashed into class on the heels of my .. .. .•. ·.· . •••.. :. sugar intake. Seven .m inutes later, my stom. ! ·: ach began to rumble like a rusty carburetor. ·. t · _:. :. Folie a deux, I scribbled furiously, trying to ·. ••• •·· •••. • • suppress the roar. Pyramus and Thisl?J. The . · · • professor's head had morphed into a doughy dinner roll. I blinked, and it was suddenly patted with melted butter. I bolted.

With a list in my hand and nothing in my stomach, I hit all of the spots on my itinerary within an hour. Animal crackers and coffee at Ten Thousand Villages; shortbread and strawberries at Wave Gallery. I knew there was a Master's Tea in Swing Space at four, so I slunk by when the lecture began, nabbing a few cubes of cheddar, a handful of crackers and an Oreo. One of the master's aides politely coughed. I snarled.

After reading take-out menus and watching the Food Network for an hour and a half it was six, and I had run out of options. I had planned on holding out for ABP's day-old pastries at 11, but the wait seemed interminable. My next move was clear: I had to sneak into a dining hall. I chose JE for its overall squalor, and casually walked in towards the baked goods, as though I had already swiped.

Just as I was about to inhale an organic brownie, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

"Did you " Panicked, I dropped the brownie and sprinted out, realizing too late that my assailant was a classmate, not a dining hall worker. I slowed down and began walking home, then stoppecion the comer of York and Elm. The scent of the burrito cart, in all of its chilipepper-panted, salsa-playing glory, wafted across the street. I watched the burrito man stuff a torrilla with rice and black beans, and burned with jealousy when I saw the smarmy expressions of the kids in line.

Such hunger makes one irrationaL I darted across the street, • sneaked up to a lacrosse player, and reached for his fresh, steun· foil-wrapped burrito. His eyes widened with fear. I lunged Stealing, after all, doesn't cost a dime. .

Mina

Kime~

a sophomore in Davenport College is Production Manager of

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'IHE NEW JOURNAL • • -. . .

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I don't want to work for The New Journal! r have better things to do with my time than work for a magazine that has • received every maJor

writing prize at Yale as well as the

Rolling

Stone College Journalism Award.

Besides, you and I both know that The New Journal is just a training ground for media types like TNJ founder, and

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Pulitzer Prize winner, Daniel Yergin or P?!St TNJ staffer, and editor of the Chicago Tribune, Jack Fuller.

. . ..• . ·.·•··• · ..

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- And you think just . because The New · Journal is the oldest magaz1ne at Yale and also has the circulatto , I'm supposed to be impressed? Give me some credit. So, l~ beg of you, go ask someone who cares.

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Well, . . le 't h · at ld love to you! The New Journal is looking for innovative writers, DTP demigods, cutting-edge designers, dynamic photographers, artistes extraordinaires, business tycoons. and interestedt interesting Yalies in general.

For more information, con ct Romy.Drucke .ale.edu April 2005

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